回転中心推定を用いた膝装具接触部の力制御

抄録

A knee orthosis is helpful for aging population to support lives of people with knee diseases. When the movement of the center of rotation (CoR) of the knee joint is not taken into account, pain will occur at attachment parts of the knee orthosis. Some of knee orthoses consider the change of CoR. However, those orthoses are difficult to deal with individual differences in body size and misalignment of attachment points. In this paper, we propose a control method that reduces the force in the direction not contributing to the lower leg motion based on real-time estimation of the CoR. This method can reduce the pain, even though the individual differences and the misalignment exist. The knee orthosis estimates the CoR using the measurements by encoders and controls the force at the attaching point. Experimental results, which use artificial knee joint for verification, shows that the control method reduces the force in the direction.