中腰姿勢の維持を目的とする空気圧ゴム人工筋肉を用いた膝関節アシスト装具の開発

抄録

In this study, we developed the first prototype of an endoskeleton-type knee joint assistive orthosis to assist in maintaining a half-sitting posture during agricultural work. We fabricated a long McKibben-type artificial muscle as the actuator of the orthosis, and proposed a method of arranging the artificial muscles along the wearer's body. After that, we conducted an evaluation test of the first prototype orthosis by measuring the surface EMG potential. From the results of the evaluation test, we found that there are some points that need to be improved in the assistance method of the orthosis and the evaluation test method. Therefore, we improved the orthosis based on the evaluation test. In the future, we plan to further improve the orthosis, improve the evaluation tests, and study better methods of assistance.