Development of standing assistive walker for domestic use

Abstract

This paper proposes a robotic walker with a standing or sitting assistance function. Although many assistance devices in previous works are specialized in only standing assistance or walking assistance, users need standing, walking and sitting assistance continuously from the same device. Our system focuses on domestic use for people who need nursing in their daily life such as elderly people. To realize an assistive robotic system for “a real world usage,” we design it considering safety, practicality and low cost. Our developed assistive system consists of a powered walker and a standing assistance manipulator. Its size is small enough for using in a narrow room such as a bathroom. Furthermore, when proposed robotic walker assists a standing motion, it uses not only an actuator for lifting up direction but also actuators of a powered walker for stabilizing its user. This means our proposed walker realizes both standing and walking assistance with minimum actuators and its cost is practically low. The performance of our proposed system is verified by experiments using our prototype with elderly or handicapped subjects.