Development and Evaluation of body weight reducing walker driven by pneumatic artificial muscle

Abstract

This paper describes a body weight reducing walking support system using pneumatic artificial muscles. The user of the system walks while sitting on a saddle. The saddle supports the weight of the upper body and reduces the load on the lower limbs. The saddle moves up and down according to the user's gait by force control using pneumatic artificial muscles, and always performs a constant body weight load reducing action while walking. To confirm the effect of this body weight load reducing motion on walking, a walking support system was constructed, and floor reaction force, gait, and muscle activity were measured through experiments. As a result, it was found that the body weight load reducing motion contributed to the reduction of floor reaction force and some muscle activities. It was also found that varying the amount of the assist force did not significantly affect gait.

Keywords

• pneumatics
• artificial muscle
• walking support
• force control
• floor reaction force
• gait