トレッドミル上歩行中のワイヤ型歩行アシストスーツの股関節屈曲支援効果

抄録

In recent years, various devices supporting the movements of elderly people and workers have been taken a dramatic leap forward. Traditional powered exoskeleton suit as one of them is a wearable machine that can be challenging to perfectly align with a wearer’s biological joints and can have large inertias. On the other hand, wire type Assist suit is constructed with wire attached in parallel with the muscles, enabling wearers to move the lower limb joints freely. Wire type is less restrictive than powered exoskeleton and it is possible to support walking in correspondence with human's flexible movements. Conventionally, it is widely used as a method of evaluating the assistance effect of the wire type on human that comparison of energy metabolism amount measured by exhalation gas measurement. This evaluation method, however, can evaluate changes in the metabolism of whole exercise, it is not possible to evaluate the degree of assistance the assist suit performs for user’s each lower limb joint. In this study, we evaluated the effect of the assist suit loading assist torque to flexion direction on hip joint by analyzing gait dynamics. We calculated hip joint angle, moment, power duration assist walking as kinetic and kinematic parameters with use of human body model simulation taken account of assist torque generated by the wire. The result showed that max hip flexion angle, step length, total hip joint torque and hip consumption energy decreased.