Abstract
"Muscle suit" that provides muscular support for the paralyzed or those otherwise unable to move unaided is being developed as a wearable robot. The muscle suit consists of a mechanical armor-type frame and McKibben artificial muscle. Application of the muscle suit to elderly people and/or disabled one requires very high-level safety and usability, from the practical point of view. We then in the first place for the practical use, apply the muscle suit to the manual worker. In this paper, we analyze human arm motion and improve the structure and mechanism of the muscle suit. Also we investigate the effect of the muscle suit for load-holding tasks.
