Lightweight Locomotion Assistant for People with Mild Disabilities

Abstract

With the current increase of the elderly population, locomotion disabilities cases are growing, and hence there is a need for lightweight, minimally intrusive, locomotion aiding devices. Bulky devices, often used in hospitals and domestic environments, namely during recovering and rehabilitation phases, tend to create difficulties to the users. This paper describes a robotic cane to assist people with mild locomotion disabilities, e.g., in the final stages of rehabilitation processes, helping users to maintain and recover balance in standing and walking situations. Moreover, the lightweight characteristics of the device enable its use in tight spaces (as often found in domestic environments). The device has unicycle kinematics and adapts its movement to the state of the user. The mathematical model, control, and hardware are detailed in the paper. Performance is assessed through experiments with real users with and without mobility impairments. The results obtained strongly confirm the viability of the concept.