Many kinds of power assist device have been developed, and are driven with various actuators such as an electric motor, a hydraulic cylinder and so on. By using the exoskeleton, a high generated torque actuator can be introduced. An assist 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. In this study, the power assist wear for lower limb is developed. The developed wear is like trousers. A human can be assisted by just wearing trousers on which the pneumatic soft actuators are put. The pneumatic soft actuator has a high power weight ratio, and has a light weight. These features contribute to realize the simple structure which is like clothes. In this paper, the structure of power assist wear is discussed, and the application of power assist wear to assist going up and down stairs are described.

Many kinds of power assist device have been developed, and are driven with various actuators such as an electric motor, a hydraulic cylinder and so on. By using the exoskeleton, a high generated torque actuator can be introduced. An assist 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. In this study, the power assist wear for lower limb is developed. The developed wear is like trousers. A human can be assisted by just wearing trousers on which the pneumatic soft actuators are put. The pneumatic soft actuator has a high power weight ratio, and has a light weight. These features contribute to realize the simple structure which is like clothes. In this paper, the structure and characteristics of power assist wear are discussed, and the applications of power assist wear to assist keeping a posture and going up and down stairs are described.

In this study, in order to realize an assist of independent life for the elderly or people in need of care and relieve a physical burden for care worker, an active support splint driven by pneumatic soft actuator (ASSIST) has been developed. ASSIST consists of a plastic interface with the palm and arm and two rotary-type soft actuators put in both sides of appliance. In this paper, the fundamental characteristics of ASSIST is described, and then the effectiveness of this splint is experimentally discussed. Finally, the operation of ASSIST based on a human intention is described.

In this study, we aim at developing a mechanical device to support humans rehabilitation motion of their wrist joint instead of or to help a physical therapist. Pneumatic parallel manipulator is introduced as the mechanical equipment from a view that pneumatic actuators bring minute force control property owing to the air compressibility and parallel manipulator’s feature of multiple degrees of freedom is suitable for a complex motion of human wrist joint. Impedance control system is introduced to realize several rehabilitation modes. The validity of the proposed system is confirmed through some experiments.

When robots work together with a human or contact with a human body directly in such as a medical welfare field, in order to avoid an accident from crash and so on, a flexibility is required for the robot. The purpose of this study is to realize a safe mechanism for a human-friendly robot. In this paper, the structure and the fundamental characteristics of a pneumatic rubber muscle and soft mechanism are described, and then the structure and the fundamental operation of the developed soft hand are shown. Finally, the shaking hands is discussed as an example of force communication tasks between a robot and a human.

The goal of this study is to develop a mechanical system which display elastic characteristic like stiffness on the surface of human body aiming at applying to palpation simulator. Pneumatic parallel manipulator is employed as a driving mechanism, consequently, it brings capability of minute force displaying property owing to the air compressibility. Compliance control system without using force/moment sensor is constructed by introducing a disturbance observer and a compliance display scheme is proposed. The validity of the proposed scheme is verified experimentally.

The paper proposes a visual servoing scheme based on object motion estimation. A long term prediction algorithm with multiple motion models is developed. The object position and velocity of a few hundreds of samples ahead is predicted. Thus object tracking without visual information can be achieved during this period. As an example, pick up task of moving object is conducted. The task requires object motion prediction because the hand mounted camera loses the object when the hand approaches the object. Simulations show convergence of prediction. Real-time experiments of picking up a moving object demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed long term predictor.

The goal of this paper is to attain a robust positioning control of a pneumatic driving system. A positioning control system positively focusing on the pressure control is investigated from the view that the pressure control is indispensable for improvement of control performances. A disturbance observer is employed to improve the pressure response and compensate the influence of friction force and parameter change. Consequently the improvements of robustness against payload and of positioning accuracy have been attained.