Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.

Yasuhiro Jikiba

Hideki Sakata

Torahiko Nonoue

Masao Kume

Yoshiya Furuie

Takahiro Yuchi

Takeya Matsushita

A massage unit of a massage device moves upward and downward along a backrest of a chair. A pair of therapeutic arms are pivotably supported on a pair of pivot arms projecting forward when viewed from the backrest. Therapeutic fingers on the therapeutic arms have massage balls disposed on them. The pivot arms are driven to move the therapeutic arms in three dimensions, i.e., up and down, left and right, forward and back, so that a patient is massaged by the massage balls. An angle detector detects the angle of the therapeutic arms relative to the pivot arms. The magnitude and change in the output of the detector is used to determine the portion of the patient's body that is being contacted by the massage balls at any time.

Massage chair

A massage machine is provided which is adapted for effective massage by initiating a pair of therapeutic fingers into a lateral movement toward or away from each other approximately simultaneously with the start of an upward or downward movement of the fingers. The massage machine comprises the therapeutic fingers arranged on the backrest of a chair, bed or the like for supporting the back of the person to be massaged, lift means for moving the therapeutic fingers upward and downward longitudinally of the backrest, means for laterally moving the therapeutic fingers toward and away from each other, and control means for initiating the therapeutic fingers into a movement toward or away from each other by the laterally moving means approximately simultaneously with the start of an upward movement of the fingers by the lift means and for initiating the fingers into a movement toward or away from each other by the laterally moving means approximately simultaneously with the start of a downward movement of the fingers by the lift means.

Backrest with fingers providing kneading massage

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Kasai, Japan

Yasuhiro Jikiba