Abstract
In recent years, accidents of bone fracture with elderly people increase because of tendency to fall by a little step in a house. As one of this cause, it is considered that the center of gravity position with foot parts is changed. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, we propose a new type of shoes with high performances by making use of sponge-core-soft rubber actuator. The actuator can estimate an external force by measurement of pressure in the actuator. Thus, when some actuators are used in the bottom of the shoes, it is possible to estimate distribution of the external forces with foot parts. Further, the actuator can control the stiffness by pressure in the actuator. Therefore, the actuators can adjust the center of gravity position of the foot parts. In this paper, the mechanism of the proposed shoes is explained and basic performances of the proposed mechanism are clarified through some experimental results.
