Abstract
Trouble with walking restricts many activities in daily life and is one of the factors that cause a significant decline in quality of life. It is expected that the proactive and independent walking with appropriate form is effective for prevention of walking functional decline or recovery of walking functions. Therefore, in this paper, the walking training machine that guides the user’s feet is developed. This device consists only of mechanisms. While the user’s feet are facilitated to walk by the mechanism, the user can exercise to walk within the frame with the caster wheels safely. The power source is the user's own movement with the cane. The rotational motion gained from that action s used as the input to drive the mechanism. The device consists of the arm driving mechanism and the foot guided mechanism that share one crankshaft. Smoothly driving the mechanism is difficult around the limit positions. Therefore, the design is such that the limit positions of the two mechanisms do not occur at the same time. In addition, the operability of this device is improved by adjusting the kinematic constants of the foot guided mechanism and modifying the transmission angle of the arm driving mechanism.
