Assistive Walker Which Stabilizes the User's Posture and Prevent Falls Through Abnormal Gait Pattern Recognition

In this paper, a novel walking assistance robot is proposed that takes into account the user's gait. Many walking assistance robots have been developed and most of them have been discussed in terms of obstacle and step avoidance functions, path following functions and gravity disabling functions. However, in the opinion of care experts, a walking assistance robot must first realize a safe walking function that does not cause the user to fall over. Therefore, it is important to maintain the user's body balance, and it is necessary to take the user's characteristics into account and coordinate the walker to the user's walking style. Therefore, our proposed system measures the gait of the user's left and right legs and calculates the position of the center of gravity to estimate the user's body balance. Our system is practical because it does not require sensors to be attached to the user's body. Our system uses the estimated body balance to control the auxiliary force vector and keep the body balance stable. A prototype walker using the proposed system is fabricated to assist the patient in walking safely.