抄録
Safety is one of the most important issues in rehabilitation robot suits. We have developed a rehabilitation robot suit equipped with two mechanical safety devices. The robot suit assists a patient's knee joint. We call one safety device the "Velocity-based safety device" and the other the "torque-based safety device". The velocity-based safety device can switch off the motor of the robot suit if the device detects an unexpected joint angular velocity. Similarly, the torque-based safety device can switch off the motor if it detects an unexpected joint torque. The safety devices can work even if the computer breaks down because they consist of only passive mechanical components without actuators, controllers, or batteries. In this paper, we first review the characteristics of the safety devices and tbe rehabilitation robot suit equipped with the safety devices. We then present the experimental results of the simulated knee joint motion when the motor has turned off by the velocity based safety device. Finally, we discuss the effectiveness of the structure of the proposed robot suit based on the experimental results.
