Development and Evaluation of body weight reducing walker driven by pneumatic artificial muscle

This paper describes a body weight reducing walking support system using pneumatic artificial muscles. The user of the walks while sitting on saddle. saddle supports upper and reduces load lower limbs. moves up down according to user's gait by force control muscles, always performs constant action walking. To confirm effect this motion walking, was constructed, floor reaction force, gait, muscle activity were measured through experiments. As result, it found that contributed reduction some activities. It also varying amount assist did not significantly affect gait.