| Research Abstract |
In order to develop a human friendly support machine for elderly people, improvement of the interface between human and mechanical system has been becoming very important. Especially, soft mechanical interfaces are strongly required in motion assist machines for handicapped people or elderly people. Therefore, an actuator that has both active elements and passive elements attracts attention to design the soft mechanical interface. To realize these elements, we propose a new type of pneumatic soft actuator that a sponge rubber is covered with silicon rubber (Silicon Outer Fence Mold Actuator). The structure of the sponge rubber is divided into two types. One is flat type actuator whose sponge form is flat shape and the other is clipping type actuator whose one sponge layer is cut by square shape.
In order to clear the difference of characteristics of two actuators, we cleared the basic characteristics of the actuators and investigated both position control and trajectory control with the actuators. From some experimental results, the control performance of the clipping type actuator was clarified. Furthermore, in order to indicate the effectiveness of the actuator, we applied the actuator to an active supporter for welfare machines. It was clarified that the burden degree of the body in leaning motion is reduced by making use of the active supporter through some experimental results. Furthermore, we applied the actuator to a congestion mat to realize the body pressure dispersion.
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