平面リンク機構と空気圧ゴム人工筋肉を用いた歩行リハビリ装置の開発

抄録

In Japan today, the aging of the population is progressing, and there is a concern that the number of elderly people who will have a trouble walking will increase. Rehabilitation of medical and welfare services are required to solve this problem, but it will be concerned to be difficult to deal with this problem due to a shortage of human resources and an increase in the number of elderly people. Therefore, there is a need to develop a walking rehabilitation device that can be handled by the elderly alone. Authors has been developing walking aids and rehabilitation devices using linkages. These devices do not require a control system or an external power source, and are designed with an emphasis on simplification and cost reduction of the devices. However, if it is designed with only a mechanism, the operation of the device may become unstable, which has been a problem. Therefore, authors aim to improve the stability of the device by newly using a pneumatic rubber artificial muscle as an actuator and assisting the operation of the mechanism. In this research, on the premise that a pneumatic rubber artificial muscle is used as an actuator, authors will develop a device that rehabilitates the interlocking movement of three leg joints with a one degree-of-freedom link mechanism. The aim of this study is to verify whether the characteristics of artificial muscles such as flexibility, high output density, and contractile movement are suitable for walking rehabilitation equipment.