Stationary torque replacement for evaluation of active assistive devices using humanoid

This paper presents a method called “stationary torque replacement” for evaluating the supportive effect of active wearable assistive devices that are designed to help humans move with actuators, by using a humanoid robot. The proposed method allows the humanoid to estimate torque equivalent to the output supportive torque of the assistive device in static postures retargeted from measured human motions. The scheme is characterized by quantitative evaluation under situations close to actual human usage with a humanoid that reproduces human motions by maintaining its balance the wearable devices. In order to validate the proposed method, we have evaluated an active wearable device “Muscle Suit” powered by pneumatic actuators by using the full-size humanoid platform HRP-4.