Development of the Lower Back Support Device with High-Pressure Gas

Abstract

Lower back pain is the most serious problem for workers in various fields and therefore sophisticated and simple solution are required. As one solution, we have been developing Muscle Suit using pneumatic artificial muscle though, due to the size of artificial muscle, there is a limit to the miniaturization of Muscle Suit. Also, Muscle Suit has a fault that it is hard to squat down deeply because of how to change the support torque. Therefore we developed a new compact device using a gas spring, which has a feature that it is easy to squat down. This paper shows the functions and mechanisms of this device.