Development and assessment of muscle suit (Evaluation of the auxiliary operation using the surface EMG)

Abstract

Due to development of day-to-day remarkable machine technology, people are being released from the extreme hard work and simple work. However, still difficult hard work site and work site which requires unreasonable attitude, such as agriculture and forestry, fishing industry, manufacturing, building industry, transport industry and medical welfare, to mechanize and automate exists. Then, it is low back pain is especially a problem in these field. According to the report of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in 2011, low back pain that require four or more days of temporary absence from work accounts for 60 presents of occupation - related disease. So we have developed a wearable power assisting device "Muscle Suit ". In particular, because the waist is easily the most injury in the body, we are promoting the development of "Back support Muscle Suit" specializing in auxiliary of the waist, it was achieved practical use. Evaluation of auxiliary effect is important as well as the development. In this report, by using EMG, we compared the effect on the muscles of the back at the time of lifting and taking down due to the presence or absence of wearing the muscle suit, the difference in load and the difference in the position during operation. In addition, we consider how the EMG outputs by using the correlation coefficient. Furthermore, we investigated the integrated EMG of as divided operations into several, not as a continuous operation. Then, by the above investigation, we showed an auxiliary effect and usefulness of the back support muscle suit.