A study of motion change during lower-limb knee joint extension motion induced by vibration stimulation for perception-assist

Abstract

Both motor ability and sensory ability are important to generate human daily motion. However, owing to ageing and/or physical handicap, these abilities sometimes decline. In order to assist motor ability and sensory ability, lower-limb/upper-limb power-assist robots with the perception-assist function have been proposed. By using the perception-assist function, the user's motion is automatically modified when the user makes inappropriate motion or there is a possibility of accidents. On the other hand, in previous studies, the possibility of another effective upper-limb perception-assist method by using vibration stimulation with kinesthetic illusion and/or TVR have been investigated as a new concept of perception-assist method. In this study, to investigate the possibility of lower-limb knee joint motion change with vibration stimulation, vibration stimulation is added to the tendon of biceps femoris muscle and semitendinosus muscle during knee joint extension motion in the experiment. As a result of this study, effective vibration stimulation method for the knee joint motion change is found out. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the lower-limb motion change can be generated with vibration stimulation during continuous knee joint extension motion.