Improvement of a Power Assist Suit Available at Construction Sites

Abstract

In our previous study, a power assist suit that is available at high place in construction sites has been developed, in which the artificial muscles are attached to back of the full harness to assist lifting heavy object and maintaining half-sitting posture. However, there exist some drawbacks in the developed power assist suit as follows. When the full harness mode is switched to the power assist suit mode, it is troublesome to fasten harness belt, and sufficient assist force was not obtained since the adjustable range of the harness belt to tighten was too short. The purpose of this study is to improve these drawbacks. To this end, three new power assist suits, “M Co. type”, “Separation type” and “Interlocking type” were built. In addition, assist effect of newly built power assist suits was evaluated through experiments of holding the heavy object with half-sitting posture. The experimental results showed that the assist effect of the newly developed “Separation type” and “Interlocking type” is comparable to or more than that of the previous power assist suit.