Development of Extension/Bending Actuator for Health Support Device of Upper Limb

Masataka SHIRAKURA, Tetsuya AKAGI, Shujiro DOHTA, Takashi SHINOHARA,  Masashi YOKOTA, Feifei CHO

The 12th JFPS International Symposium on Fluid Power HIROSHIMA 2024

Japan Fluid Power System Society

HIROSHIMA

Recently, due to decreasing birthrate and increasing aging population have been a problem, the elderly is required as a healthy person that does not need nursing care. Based on this situation, a healthcare supporting device using soft actuators that can give passive exercise have been actively researched and developed. In this study, a Twin arm type Extension/Bending Mechanism (“E/BM” for short) using Extension type Flexible Pneumatic Actuators (“EFPA” for short) that can give a passive exercise for upper limbs while grasping top ends of both mechanisms was proposed and tested. An attitude remote control system of twin arm type EBM that can control the bending angle and extensional displacement by changing the pressurized EFPA and adjusting inner pressure of EFPA through Bluetooth was also developed. In addition, to increase the bending stiffness and generated torque of the E/BM, a novel truncated cone type E/BM was proposed and tested. The attitude measuring system using two wire type potentiometers was also developed. As a result, the actuator could be controlled by using simple attitude sensor.