![](bg6.png)
to walk when lifting, these moments should be
supported. However, it is also desirable that the
wearer be able to abduct the leg. Passive joints that
only allow abduction of the legs would solve this.
5 DISCUSSION
Even with the proposed solutions the variety of
motions that can be performed with HAL is still less
than without, and limitations remain. Gravity
compensation is limited to generic postures, some
useful DoFs, such as inner rotation of the arm, are
not augmented, and the full RoMs are not achieved.
Even so, in most working situations there are
several postures available to the worker by which
the task’s goals can be achieved, and the wearer may
adapt his motion to utilize postures for which HAL
provides the most support. Since this is available in
postures humans use extensively it is very likely that,
although it should be confirmed by further research,
at any time at least one good posture can be attained.
Therefore, HAL would be valuable in a human
environment and the proposed practical design
approach thus achieved its goals. In addition, it is
expected that further practical, human characteristics
may be exploited to simplify design.
We believe that a similar practical focus may be
applied to other fields where humans and machines
meet cooperatively, such as rehabilitation, to yield
new improvements. A practical approach could
unveil solutions that enable patients to perform
particularly those motions needed for daily activities.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported in part by the Global COE
Program on “Cybernics: fusion of human, machine,
and information systems”.
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