Estimating Changing Drive Timing Effects of Exosuit on Jumping Height for Augmenting Human Instantaneous Force

This study aims to develop an exosuit that can augment human jumping motion. This paper proposes a method to increase the output that contributes to jumping by an exosuit by changing the generation timing of the same level of input energy, thereby increasing the jumping height of humans. Previous studies to enhance human jumping motion include exosuits that use motors and artificial muscles. However, an increase in the jumping height by these exosuits is less than several tens of millimeters, and the augmentation of the jumping motion is small. A model of a humanoid robot and an exosuit was developed in a previous study, and an increase in the jumping height was compared through the dynamic analysis for each attachment method of the exosuit. This paper presents the results of dynamic analysis on the relationship between the drive timing of the exosuit and the jumping height in relation to human movements. The change in the jumping height by drive timing is assumed to be large in a series attachment, and the jumping height increases by 24 % when the upward force exerted by the exosuit is applied at the timing when the human ground reaction force is at its maximum. This result indicates that the proposed method can estimate the effect of the drive timing of the exosuit on human jumping height. Therefore, the proposed method is expected to accelerate the development of exosuits that augment the jumping motion.