Context-aware assisted interactive robotic walker for Parkinson's disease patients

Abstract

This paper introduces a context-aware assisted active robotic walker for Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Most of PD patients suffer from not only loss of balance but also abnormal gaits. These symptoms tend to make PD patients fall down more easily and result in low quality of life. We use Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to analyze the gait of PD patients, and then use our walker to help patients adjust their gait to become normal while applying auditory cues when abnormal gaits are recognized. To prevent user from leaning forward before falling down, the walker locks the motors when sudden forward pushing by the user is detected. Moreover, the walker can record the statics of gait from the user, making the therapists monitor the rehabilitation process relatively easier. Finally, the road conditions in front of the walker will be automatically analyzed, making user able to adjust his/her walking pace dynamically. To our best knowledge, the hereby proposed active robotic walker should be the first system which can provide walking aid to PD patients. In our experiments, the feasibility and performance of this system are evaluated by PD patients at two actual senior care units.