A passive power-assist supporter, called Smart Suit Lite, aims at reducing the lumbar load utilizing the tension of elastic belts. Its design method is based on a digital human model and motion measurements. This paper presents basic experiments using humanoid robot HRP-4 for verifying the design model of the suit. In the experiment, the joint torques of the robot and the elastic force of Smart Suit Lite were measured. We found that the decrease of the chest pitch torque during slow forward bending motion on the sagittal plane was consistent with simulation results. In addition, the effects for three-dimensional motion including chest pitching and yawing also indicated a similar tendency to the simulation. Because we performed quantitative evaluation of the effects by each part of the suit, these results are considered to provide useful information to the optimization of Smart Suit Lite.
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