Active seating support which reduces the pressure and share stress for a wheelchair user

This paper proposes an automatic sitting posture coordination system for avoiding the risk of the pressure sore on a wheelchair. For avoiding this risk, it is important to maintain the suitable posture which reduces the pressure concentration and share stress between the buttock and a sitting surface on the wheelchair, and to depressurize them as the healthy person does during sitting on the wheelchair. For realizing these functions, this paper proposes an active seating support system which consists of a sitting surface lifting device and a backrest tension coordination device. Our system estimates the pressure concentration and share stress on the buttock and based on the estimated results, our system realizes the suitable sitting posture which minimizes them coordinating two devices. Furthermore, when the risk of the pressure sore increases, our system assists to depressurize the pressure concentration and share stress with this suitable sitting posture. Using our proposed active seating system, the patient can depressurize by a natural body motion as the healthy person automatically. The performance of our system is verified by experiments using our prototype.