Abstract
This paper presents a power assist orthosis that assists a human helper caring for old people's wake up motions. In developing such a device, we especially focus on the usability of the device both for nursing people and nursed people. That is, a feature of a user's intentional directability of an orthosis should be realized, and it must be so that a user's acting intention should not conflict with the motion of an orthosis. We introduce an idea of isomorphism for an interactive task that a human performs with a nursed people, and discuss about the usability and operability of an orthosis in terms of this idea. Based on the preliminary analysis of a human nursing motion, design specifications for an orthosis are determined, and impedance control is embedded within a designed orthosis. Experimental results obtained so far are presented, and ongoing and future issues are discussed.
