Abstract
alternative vehicle of a wheel chair that is driven by human cranking and actuators. One of the requirement to a power assisting system of the walking chair is that human power is utilized as much as possible while long distance movement can be achieved without much fatigue by human, hi this paper, we investigated kinetostatic characteristics of upper part of a human body through experiment. We proposed a model composed of 3-dof translations associated with the shoulder. 3-dof rotations associated with upper arm's flexion-extension, abduction-adduction and rotation, and a single dof associated with elbow's bending and stretching, hi the model, constraints on the maximum joint torque have been introduced in simultaneous actuation of multiple joints. Then, we applied the proposed model to design an appropriate axis position of the crank driven by human.
