APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR APPLYING CUTANEOUS SENSE STIMULUS

摘要

A device for promoting subject person~s awareness of a change of his/her posture, the awareness promoted by skin sensory stimulation produced based o n posture change information (amount, direction, etc. of a positional change o f subject person~s gravity center) from an apparatus for detecting a posture change of the subject person. The device has stimulation-producing means (vibrators) for producing skin sensory stimulation and stimulation-controlli ng means for driving the stimulation-producing means based on the posture chang e information. The control means has means for selecting vibrators, based on t he direction of a positional change of the gravity center, from the vibrators arranged substantially parallel to the direction of a positional change of t he gravity center, and sequentially drives the selected vibrators, for example, to the direction opposite the direction of a positional change of the gravit y center. Further, the control means drives the vibrators so as to produce sensory stimulation with strength corresponding to the amount of a direction al change of the gravity center. The vibrators are installed on a foot bottom, waist, breast, etc. The device can accurately inform the subject person of a change of his/her posture to promote his/her action to maintain the posture.