Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 01, 2022 - June 04, 2022
When using knee orthoses, the user feels pain by the force due to the misalignment between the user and orthosis. This is mainly due to that the center of rotation (CoR) of the knee does not coincide with the CoR of the orthosis. However, the CoR position of the knee is not constant, and there may be misalignment in the wearing position of the orthosis. In this study, we solved these problems by using a parallelogram linkage. It passively deforms as the knee expands and contracts, thereby absorbing the misalignment of motion. We proposed a design method to minimize the length of the parallelogram linkage that can tolerate the assumed misalignment of the mounting position. Finally, through experiments, we showed that only torque can be transmitted between the orthosis and the leg attachment without generating pain-causing forces.
