Abstract
For the upcoming aging society, the demands for health care robots are increasing. Power-assisting device is an equipment that enhances the mobility of elderly and disabled people. Other potential applications are for rehabilitation and sports training. The main focus of conventional power-assisting devices is to assist human motion as a whole reducing the burden of all related muscles, such as for walking or lifting a patient. The purpose of this study is to modify the load force of any selected muscles by using an exoskeleton, enabling "pinpointed" motion support, rehabilitation, and training by explicitly modifying the target muscles. We propose a muscle force control algorithm that checks the feasibility of a combination of desired muscle forces, and calculates the driving-force of the power-assisting device for realizing the desired muscle forces. The feasibility of this muscle force control is analyzed from a view point of nonlinear programming. The validity of the method is confirmed by simulation.
