Evaluation of Endoskeleton-Type Assist Suit “Sustainable” Based on Musculoskeletal Model

Nowadays, power assist suits have been widely used in various fields such as agriculture, nursing care, construction and transportation industries. Power assist suits are divided into exoskeleton and endoskeleton. Recently, endoskeleton has attracted an attention due to its user friendliness. However, under wearing the endoskeleton, since the compressive force is directly added to the wearer's spine due to its structure, it may adversely affect the wearer's lumbar disc. Actually, the lumbar burdens while lifting the heavy object under wearing the endoskeleton have not been fully investigated. The purpose of this study is to perform accurate dynamic analysis of the lumbar burdens under wearing the endoskeleton-type assist suit “Sustainable”. Therefore, in this study, a motion of lifting and taking down the harvest as agricultural work, and a motion of transfer work as nursing care, were captured by the motion capture under wearing and not wearing the Sustainable. Then, the lumbar burdens were analyzed by using the musculoskeletal model software “AnyBody Modeling System”. In addition, the results of analysis and the experimental results obtained in our previous study were compared. As a result, validity of the analysis using the AnyBody Modeling System for the captured motions was indicated. Thus, from the results of analysis, usefulness of the Sustainable to reduce the burden on the subject's lower back was confirmed.