油圧人工筋肉を用いた上肢用超人化スーツによる懸垂運動の実現

抄録

In recent years, powered exoskeletons are getting more and more attention. Most of the existing powered exoskeletons use electric motors as actuators which usually make them bulky and be sensitive to impact and vibration. To solve these problems, we tried to use Hydraulic artificial muscle (HAM), an innovative McKibben type artificial muscle, as an ideal alternative. In this report, we designed and developed a 4 DOF upper-limb powered exoskeleton based on HAMs. It aims to assist the elbow joints and shoulder joints of the wearer and help him or her to perform chin-ups easily. The simulation results showed that over 398Nm can be generated at shoulder joint, and 79Nm at elbow joint by our powered exoskeleton, separately. Experiment demonstrated that a male subject who is not strong enough to perform a chin-up can do it continuously with ease with the assist of our powered exoskeleton.