Analysis of Effects on Postural Stability by Wearable Tactile Expression Mechanism

In this paper, we examine a method for stabilizing walking by using a wearable tactile expression mechanism based on a pneumatic actuator array. So far, we have researched wearable stuffed toy robots and their tactile expression mechanism for supporting elderly people’s going out, especially from a cognitive perspective. In addition to the cognitive support, we aim to achieve a physical support by using our device, and we consider walking stabilization using our device. Toward this goal, in this paper, we examine the effects of the tactile stimuli of our device on directions in which the participants felt pulled by the haptic stimuli and the center of gravity (CoG) movements. In the experiment, we evaluated the effects both subjectively and quantitatively.