The present invention relates to an air supply and exhaust system suitable for use in a buoyancy compensator carried by a diver.
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 1995-71957 (Citation) discloses a buoyancy compensator for diving in which an exhaust valve assembly is attached to an air supply opening provided on a shoulder of the buoyancy compensator and an exhaust valve of this assembly is opened by an air flow introduced from a power inflator to exhaust the air from the buoyancy compensator.
In the buoyancy compensator disclosed in Citation, the power inflator is provided with an exhaust button and an inflator button side by side which are properly used for air supply to or air exhaust from the buoyancy compensator. For proper use of these two buttons, a driver may be required to be more or less skillful. An additional problem may occur due to the arrangement of this buoyancy compensator such that the air used to open the exhaust valve is supplied by an inner hose extending within a bellows-type outer hose. More specifically, this inner hose is connected to the exhaust valve within the bellows-type outer hose and therefore it may be often difficult to detect any abnormality occurring in various regions such as a region along the inner hose itself or a region in which the inner hose is connected to the exhaust valve.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds