Augmentation of Human Protection Functions Using Wearable and Sensing System

Our muscles have characteristic features which are stiffness and elasticity. The reason we make the muscle's characteristic features stronger is to protect bones and organs from external attacks. The purpose of this study is to develop a voluntary protection suit that has stiffness and elasticity, and to confirm that the wearers can control it voluntarily and enhance their protective functions. The suits consist of sensing, control and pneumatic artificial muscles (PAM) units. When the sensing unit detects the wearer's protection intention based on bioelectrical signals, solenoid valve in the control unit releases compressed air in PAM. PAM, expanded by the air, generates increased stiffness and elasticity levels. The suits have PAM units around both the upper limbs and anterior and posterior the chest and the abdomen. By our basic experiment, we confirmed that the suit started putting compressed air into PAM by detecting the wearer's protection intention. The results of the wearing experiments showed that the suit could decrease the pain and pressure of wearer greatly. Based on the results, we concluded that we could develop a voluntary protection suit enhancing human protection functions. The proposed strategies could be applied for a new full-body protection system utilizing artificial muscle with stiffness and the elasticity.