Consideration about Structure of Gait Motion Assist Device for Trunk Using McKibben Type Pneumatic Artificial Muscle

Stability and efficiency of walking can be obtained according to trunk motions such as side flexion and rotation. In this study, spine type wearable device which can correct a posture and assist these trunk motions was developed to support exercise therapy for people declined in ability of walking. Proposed device has advantage of high affinity with human body owing to adjustable stiffness mechanism. In this paper, the mechanism of device, design method of artificial muscle based on rubber property and assisting method are described. The mechanism of device imitates spine structure to realize adjustable stiffness characteristics. We applied an artificial muscle model to simplify of mechanism and control method. Finally, the effectiveness of proposed mechanism and assisting method was confirmed from experiment result.