Development of pneumatic power assist wear to reduce physical burden

Many kinds of power assist device have been developed. By using the exoskeleton, a high generated torque actuator can be introduced. An assistance performance of these devices becomes high. On the other hand, a realization of exoskeleton which has the same D.O.F of a human is not easy from considerations about a size and strength of device. The purpose of this study is to develop power assist device which is easy to use like normal clothes and does not restrict movement even though the assistance rate is not so high. User can be assisted by wearing this one on which the pneumatic soft actuator, which has a high power weight ratio and a light weight, is put. Final goal of this wear is to reduce a physical burden caused by heavy equipment such as a heatproof suit for a firefighter and so on. In this paper, the structure of power assist wear is discussed, and the assistance effect under the condition that a heavy load is applied to upper body is verified from iEMG.