Smart suit for horse trainers-power and skill assist based on semi-active assist and energy control

This paper describes semi-active assist control in the form of a smart suit for horse trainers. We have developed a soft and flexible power assist device named ”smart suit” for reducing user´s physical fatigue. The smart suit is a semi-active and flexible power assist devices. The semi-active assist mechanism consisting of elastic materials and a small DC motor is our original technology. The assist force is gained by the elastic force of elastic materials, and it is controlled by adjusting the length of the elastic materials by using DC motor. In this study, we applied the smart suit to horse trainers for reducing their physical fatigue in horse training to prevent their injuries. Moreover we aim developing an assist force control method based on the energy control for considering not only the power assist but the skill assit. In this paper, we confirm the energy control has the effectiveness of the power assist in the situation without the skill assist.