Soft Actuating Sit-to-Stand Trainer Seat

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel type of soft robot for sit to stand (STS) training, which is made with soft bellow actuators. Analysis with five healthy human subjects revealed that there is a statistically significant decrease in the peak and mean muscle activation signal from three out of the four groups of lower limb muscle for STS transition, namely, tibialis anterior, hamstrings, and quadriceps. The peak muscle activation decreased most drastically on the quadriceps muscle group (0.726 ± 0.467 to 0.269 ± 0.334). As reduced muscle activation signal correlates to less muscular effort required by the users, the results show the effectiveness of the device in partially supporting the STS transition of the subject, which subsequently serves as an STS trainer device.