Control of Human Elbow-Joint-Extension-Motion Change Based on Vibration Stimulation for Upper-Limb Perception-Assist

To prevent accidents occurring in daily life, such as the collision between objects in the environment and our body, the perception-assist technique, which can automatically change a dangerous motion to a safe motion, has been considerably studied. In addition, it has recently been found by the authors that a human's motion is different from his/her intended motion if vibration stimulation is presented on an antagonist muscle. In this study, a method to change human motion in a controlled manner using vibration stimulation is proposed for the perception-assist and applied for elbow-joint-extension motion change. In this study, it is elucidated that the amount of elbow-joint-extension motion change can be changed with respect to the frequency change of the vibration stimulation. Furthermore, it is elucidated that the change in the human elbow-joint-extension motion can be generated soon after the vibration stimulation is provided. Based on the characteristics of motion change with respect to vibration stimulation, the proposed method controls the change of the user's elbow-joint-extension motion by adjusting the frequency of the vibration stimulation to achieve the target motion, which is different from the user's intended motion. The effectiveness of the proposed method toward the change in the human elbow-joint-extension motion was experimentally evaluated.