Abstract—In this paper, for the purpose of practical use of the power assist suit, the overalls type power assist suit developed in our previous study was improved. The knee pad type power assist suit termed “Cool Vest” was newly developed, and verification experiments were carried out. By wearing the developed assist suit, the muscular load decreased 46% at the maximum in the case of lifting and taking down the 30kg object and decreased 43% at the maximum in the case of transferring the 20kg object by turning around. In addition, air supplying method to the artificial muscle was also improved. An air recycling system and an air generation system were proposed, and evaluation experiments were executed. As results, the number of times which can be used for assisting the transfer work increased from 5 times to 7 times by using these air supplying systems.
Index Terms—Power assist suit, artificial muscle, cool vest, air supplying system.
Chiharu Ishii is with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan (e-mail: c-ishii@hosei.ac.jp). Kotaro Yoshida is with the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan (e-mail: koutaro.yosida.5y@stu.hosei.ac.jp).
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Cite: Chiharu Ishii and Kotaro Yoshida, "Improvement of a Lightweight Power Assist Suit for Nursing Care," International Journal of Engineering and Technology vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 256-261, 2019.
