Development of MR fluid-based gait assist cane for elderly people

Abstract

Recently, the population ratio of elderly people is increasing rapidly and so, to improve the QOL of elderly people is a today's important social issue. An urgent problem is the decrease of the walking ability. Elderly persons who have the difficulty in walking are increasing today and thus, there are many elderly persons who need special support for walking. In this research, we aim to develop a new multi-legs gait assist cane which can improve the stability of the walk on the uneven terrain and can prevent fall with robot technologies. In this paper, we developed a prototype of a gait assist cane which has the expansion and contraction mechanism with variable compliance in each leg. It is controlled mainly by using MR fluid and passive springs. In this paper, we realized the absorption function for the ununiformity of terrain surface by controlling the compliance of each leg. We also discussed the external force estimation algorithm, i.e. user's force estimation algorithm. The experimental results show the validity of the proposed approach.