An Algorithm for Detecting Linear Velocity and Angular Velocity for Improve Convenience of Assistive Walking System

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a walk status method which can be fused with conventional walk intention method to improve convenience of an electric assistive walking system for elder people with restricted walking capabilities. The system uses a handlebar as a trigger and regards grabbing a handlebar as expressing will to walk. And the system uses a user's linear velocity and angular velocity as linear velocity and angular velocity of a system, checked by laser range finder. To achieve this, we propose a method to find a virtual central point of a human body by estimating a central point between two legs. The experiments are carried out by comparing user's linear velocity and angular velocity, and system's linear velocity and angular velocity. The results show that the error of linear velocity and angular velocity between a user and a system are 1% and 2.77%, which means the linear velocity and angular velocity of a user can be applied to a system. And it is confirmed that the proposed fusion method can prevent a user from being dragged by an assistive walking system or a malfunction caused by lack of experience