Abstract
In the modern society, an assistive/powered suit has been developed to enhance the limb and trunk movements by mechanical force. The effective output of assistive products needs cooperation between the users, that is, human beings and the machine. The present study investigated the motor control of external forces that assist with physical exertion. Sixteen adult male participants performed isometric elbow flexion under two conditions of submaximal workload (20% and 40% of the maximal voluntary contraction) and four levels (0%, 33%, 67%, and 100%) of assistive force. The electromyographic (EMG) activity of the agonist and antagonist muscles (biceps and triceps, respectively) and rating of perceived exertion decreased with increased levels of assistive force under both workload conditions. At the lower level of assistance (33%), the EMG amplitude of the biceps was near the expected amplitude, which denotes that the participants made good use of the assistive force. However, at the higher level of assistance (100%), it was far from the expected values at both workload levels. These results suggest that the effectiveness of assistive force changes according to the level of workload and assistive force, and that various human physiological regulations and motor control would be required during cooperative work with assistive force.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Nasir N, Hayashi K, Loh PY, Muraki S (2017) The effect of assistive force on the agonist and antagonist muscles in elbow flexion. Mov Health Exerc 6(2):35–52
Bellar D, LeBlanc N, Judge LW (2014) Examination of muscle activity with an elastic hamstring assistance device. Health Res Rev 1(1):20–24
Gams A, Petric T, Debevec T, Babic J (2013) Effects of robotic knee exoskeleton on human energy expenditure. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 60(6):1636–1644
Tang Z, Zhang K, Sun S, Gao Z, Zhang L, Yang Z (2014) An upper-limb power-assist exoskeleton using proportional myoelectric control. Sensors (Basel) 14(4):6677–6694
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant No. JP 15K14619 and 17H01454).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Muraki, S., Hayashi, K., Nasir, N., Loh, P.Y. (2019). Motor Control with Assistive Force During Isometric Elbow Flexion. In: Bagnara, S., Tartaglia, R., Albolino, S., Alexander, T., Fujita, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 820. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96083-8_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96083-8_24
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96082-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96083-8
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)