Mobility impairment is becoming a challenging issue around the world with a rapid increase on aging population. Existing tools of walking assistance for mobility-impaired people include passive canes or wheeled rollators which increase energy consumption on the users and disturb the users' walking rhythm, and powered wheeled chairs which could preclude the muscle activities and accelerate the degeneration of the lower limbs. The research in this paper aiming at helping mobility-impaired people proposes a novel robotic platform with quadrupedal locomotion. With motorized actuation, the quadruped robotic platform could accompany the user at the center and provide protection and possible walking assistance if needed. As the robotic platform is equipped with a leg locomotion, it can enlarge the user's activity environments, such as both indoor flat floor and outdoor uneven terrain. It can even assist the user to involve in some mobility challenging activities, such as climbing stairs. In this paper, we illustrate the mechanical design of the robotic platform. A continuous gait planning is proposed to create a smooth locomotion for the robot. To quantify the performance, a system-level walking experimentation was conducted, and the results showed that quadruped robotic platform can maintain a statically stability which demonstrate the feasibility and capability of the robotic application for walking assistance.
Impaired mobility negatively impacts a patient’s life, both physically and mentally. Existing tools for the assistance of such individuals include passive walking aids, which tend to disrupt the users’ walking rhythms, and motorized wheelchairs, which preclude the muscle activity of the users’ lower limb. To address these problems, this paper proposes a new robotic walker guided by an image processing system. This system uses visual information from a 3D camera to estimate the user’s position and orientation, and the motion are sent to a PID controller to actuate the robot so that the robot can automatically follow the user to provide assistance if needed. Therefore, for regular walking, the device can accompany the user without interfering with the muscle activity of the lower limbs; for rehabilitation training, it may support the user and provide protection. To reduce the errors of the estimated position and orientation, a discrete derivative term is added into a conventional PI controller to form a mixed PID controller which can reduce the noise from measurement or image processing. Experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed robotic method, as well as the functionality and effectiveness of the whole robotic system.
With the rapid expansion of older adult populations around the world, mobility impairment is becoming an increasingly challenging issue. For the assistance of individuals with mobility impairments, there are two major types of tools in the current practice, including the passive (unpowered) walking aids (canes, walkers, rollators, etc.) and wheelchairs (powered and unpowered). Despite their extensive use, there are significant weaknesses that affect their effectiveness in daily use, especially when challenging uneven terrains are encountered. To address these issues, the authors developed a novel robotic platform intended for the assistance of mobility-challenged individuals. Unlike the existing assistive robots serving similar purposes, the proposed robot, namely Quadrupedal Human-Assistive Robotic Platform (Q-HARP), utilizes legged locomotion to provide an unprecedented potential to adapt to a wide variety of challenging terrains, many of which are common in people's daily life (e.g., roadside curbs and the few steps leading to a front door). In this paper, the design of the robot is presented, including the overall structure of the robot and the design details of the actuated robotic leg joints. For the motion control of the robot, a joint trajectory generator is formulated, with the purpose of generating a stable walking gait to provide reliable support to its human user in the robot's future application. The Q-HARP robot and its control system were experimentally tested, and the results demonstrated that the robot was able to provide a smooth gait during walking.
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