抄録
Falls are a leading reason for elderly people to require nursing care The prevention of falls requires the evaluation of standing balance ability of human Thus various measurements were performed and the relation between the results and the occurrence of falls were considered Although these measurements were mainly done under stable upright posture, the measurements of balance ability should be done under near falling However from a viewpoint of safety of subjects, the occurrences of falls which may inflict damage on them must be avoided This study, thus, develops a device that can measure standing balance of subjects until falls The device consists of a three degree of freedom (3DOF) wire driven parallel mechanism, the output link of which is attached to a subject The device can control 3DOF rotational motion of the output link by wires Each wire has strain-gages to detect the forces applied to a subject and judge the falling moment Furthermore, a force-plate is set on the base to measure the center of pressure (COP) of a subject The device can guide subjects in specified direction at the measurements and support them safely at falling We measured the COP at the fall moment and the body sways on tilting posture by the proposed device As a result, it is found that the differences between subjects become clearer as their postures tilt closer to fall moment
