Muscle textile to implement soft suit to shift balancing posture of the body

Abstract

This study reports on the design and construction of a body support suit based on two novel concepts: muscle textile and shifting the balancing posture of the body. The muscle textile is an active textile composed of soft thin muscles that provides a large supporting force, and is flexible and lightweight. Shifting the balancing posture of the body involves changing its neutral posture while relaxing the muscles, making it easier to perform tasks in uncomfortable positions and simplifying the control system of the support suit. These two ideas are employed herein to design a flexible, light, comfortable, and simple support suit system. We then propose and test a soft suit intended to assist humans in tasks involving unnatural arm positions based on this design. The performed subjective experiments confirmed that the 2 kg soft suit attained a self-weight compensation of up to 120° forward, a reduction of 33% in the integrated electromyogram in the brachialis muscle, and a suppression of 5% of body sway.