Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 28, 2023 - July 01, 2023
In the aging society, maintaining gait function and motion is important for a hemiplegic patient who left the hospital. In this study, we propose a human-powered and wearable mechanism that assists the hip joint extension of the paretic side and the flexion of the non-paretic side by use of the user’s residual function, especially non-paretic hip joint motion. In this paper, a prototype design was shown and a link model of the lower limbs and the proposed mechanism were explained. With the paretic gait motion data, the accumulation torque and assist torque was estimated by use of the proposed link model. In the proposed mechanism, the estimated assist torque was 2.7Nm for the paretic side and 3.1Nm for the non-paretic side. In future work, we will focus on full body motion and redesign the proposed mechanism in detail to manufacture the prototype and evaluate the function of gait assistance for hemiplegic patients.
