Non-Invasive Blood Pressure Monitor(NIBP)is widely used in the clinical fields, as one of the most important vital sign monitors. Monitoring of blood pressure will suffer from the body movement of patients by spontaneity or medical treatments. Further more these devices utilize pulsation caused by the heartbeats cannot work in case of weak heartbeats. This study has given an answer to the above problems by using 6, 000 data taken from NIBP devices in the clinical fields.

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An experimental study was performed to investigate a care-giver's lifting ability under various lifting conditions intransferring a patient from sitting to standing positions. Nine female volunteers of college students repeated lifting of a weight until they failed to lift a heavier weight. The load was set up to increase step by step for each trial, and lifting force and height were recorded during each trial with the use of Lido Lift(Lordan Biomedical Inc.). Three levels of height were chosen to cover different lifting positions of diverse body lengths of patients. Comparing loads which corresponded to the same lifting velocity under various lifting conditions, we assessed the effect of waist-belt and posture, i. e. stoop and squat, on the lifting ability of a care-giver. The results showed the advantage of the combination of the waist-belt and the squatting posture both at the level of load close to the lifting limit and at the level of reduced load. It was suggested that lifting ability of the subjects under various lifting condition scould be assessed at the reduced load level.

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We ha ve successfully developed a new artificial arm for physically handicapped people by use of ultrasonic motors. The ultrasonic motor has a lot of advantages: high torque; low speed; no braking mechanism; no magnetic noise. Especially, aspherical ultrasonic motor has three degrees of freedom in one unit which is similar to the joint of human being's.Then we have attempted to apply a spherical ultrasonic moto to a joint of wrist of an artificial arm. In addition that, we have newly developed a high output torque type of ultrasonic motor for an elbow joint and a shoulder joint. The artificial arm by use of ultrasonic motor shows good maneuverability and excellent controllability.

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