TY - JOUR
T1 - DESIGN OF WEARABLE TENSEGRITY STRUCTURES FOCUSING ON THE TENSION PROPAGATION FUNCTION THROUGHOUT THE BODY
AU - Wakashima, Hiroki
AU - Kishino, Kodai
AU - Iizuka, Shinpei
AU - Tamachi, Masahiro
AU - Wesugi, Shigeru
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI JP20K11923 and by the project “Study on Human Dynamics Measurement” of the Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University. The authors would like to thank Gaku Tamaki, Yoshiki Aoki, and Takato Wakuda for their help.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Humans are able to perform skilful movements by coordinating muscles throughout the body. It has been revealed that not only neural mechanisms but also direct and dynamic interactions between body parts contribute to muscular coordination. Tensegrity, accurately biotensegrity, can be considered to the basic mechanism for the interactions. Tensegrity structures are composed of tensile and compressive components, and are lighter and more flexible than existing rigid structures. The authors investigated designing wearable tensegrity structures for extending human motor ability, especially assisting in carrying heavy objects. Based on Flemons' spine model, we devised a columnar tensegrity structure that can be expanded to the size of the whole body, and connected each of four columns to the front and back of the body on right and left side. The wearable tensegrity structures can deform flexibly due to tension distribution when external force is applied, and follow the human motions in twisting trunk and walking. Experimental results in carrying heavy objects showed that some muscle activities around hip and knee tended to decrease by using the structures when those joints extended.
AB - Humans are able to perform skilful movements by coordinating muscles throughout the body. It has been revealed that not only neural mechanisms but also direct and dynamic interactions between body parts contribute to muscular coordination. Tensegrity, accurately biotensegrity, can be considered to the basic mechanism for the interactions. Tensegrity structures are composed of tensile and compressive components, and are lighter and more flexible than existing rigid structures. The authors investigated designing wearable tensegrity structures for extending human motor ability, especially assisting in carrying heavy objects. Based on Flemons' spine model, we devised a columnar tensegrity structure that can be expanded to the size of the whole body, and connected each of four columns to the front and back of the body on right and left side. The wearable tensegrity structures can deform flexibly due to tension distribution when external force is applied, and follow the human motions in twisting trunk and walking. Experimental results in carrying heavy objects showed that some muscle activities around hip and knee tended to decrease by using the structures when those joints extended.
KW - Bio-inspired design / biomimetics
KW - Case study
KW - Design for interfaces
KW - Motion assist
KW - Tensegrity
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U2 - 10.1017/pds.2023.129
DO - 10.1017/pds.2023.129
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85165498362
SN - 2732-527X
VL - 3
SP - 1287
EP - 1296
JO - Proceedings of the Design Society
JF - Proceedings of the Design Society
T2 - 24th International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED 2023
Y2 - 24 July 2023 through 28 July 2023
ER -