Page - 143 - in Intelligent Environments 2019 - Workshop Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Environments

Advancement of IoH/IoT “Assist Suits” to Support Workplaces with Heavy Lifting and Telescopic System to Enable Further Reduction of Stress Applied to Knee Joints Taishi NAKAZAWA a , Yasuhiro KAWAHARA b , Hiroshi YOSHIDA c a The Open University of Japan Graduate School, Living and Welfare Program Master Course b The Open University of Japan, Living and Welfare Program Professor c Nippon Telegraph And Telephone Corporation Abstract. There are increasing numbers of Assist Suits in workplaces where heavy lifting is required. These suits are typically designed to reduce the stress applied to the lower back region. However, some of the workplaces have started to use more of the knee flexion in order to reduce the stress of the lower back. This led to the research on effective functions to reduce the stress applied to the knee. Through the maximum lifting test and measurement of EMG in the surface, the effect of the proposed device was investigated. In addition, testing with three different levels of assistance strengths and how it affects the wearer’s feeling of the assistance led to a finding that as the level of the assistance increases, the wearer feels more assistance accordingly. Furthermore, If the angle of the knee extension can be measured with the device using the IoH/IoT functions of the assisted suits, it could be used as an indication of fatigue accumulated through work by combining with other indicators such as changes in the duration between tasks. Keywords. Fatigue, Internet of Humans, Internet of Things, Assist Suits 1. Background and objective of the research 1.1 Background of the research Workers in various workplaces such as care facilities, warehouses, factories, airports, construction sites, and farms handle heavy weight lifting every day. Wearable robots are beginning to be adopted in such workplaces in order to reduce the workload. Due to aging, the aforementioned workplaces are facing a lack of manpower. It can be predicted that such workplaces will hire more women and elderly in the years to come. Wearable robots must be installed with functions to reduce the workload so that a wider range of users can take part in these demanding tasks. The existing wearable robot was purely designed for reduction of workload. However, with new technologies Intelligent Environments 2019 A. Muñoz et al. (Eds.) © 2019 The authors and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). doi:10.3233/AISE190036 143