Unplugged powered suit with pneumatic gel muscles

Abstract

Assistive suits are useful in case of injury or muscle fatigue or due to aging. To support such conditions, we develop the unplugged assistive suit using low air pressure actuated pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs). In demonstration we show the ability to actuate low power PAMs with the help of a shoe with air pumping capability. Most PAMs require an external source of energy i.e. an electric air compressor to operate, but in our proposed model we use human motions as a tool to generate air pressure which result in assisting motions of a leg in the swing motion by giving sense of assistive feeling to a human. This is also verified by analyzing the experimental results.