Pattern based standing assistance adapted to individual subjects on a robotic walker

Abstract

This study proposes a pattern based standing assistance on a robotic walker with a standing and sitting assistance function. In our previous works, we have developed a standing assistance system. Our assistive system consists of a powered walker and a standing assistance manipulator, and is small enough to be used in a typical narrow room such as a bathroom. Our system focuses on domestic use for elderly people who need nursing in their day-to-day lives. Usually, the body conditions of elderly users are different individually and required standing assistance schemes are also different. However, it is difficult to design the suitable standing assistance scheme according to the symptom of elderly users individually at real time because of its cost. Therefore, the proposed walker has several standing assistance patterns which are designed for the user of the different symptom and selects the suitable one for its user. Our idea is practicality for implementation with low cost. The performance of our proposed system was verified through experiments using our prototype with elderly and handicapped subjects.