Abstract
In Japan, the number of aged people is rapidly increasing. It is expected that elderly patients who need walk rehabilitation will increase. In hospitals, walking support robots are needed that can safely assist patients. We have presented a walking support robot equipped with two velocity-based safety devices and experimentally examined the usefulness of the velocity-based safety devices. This paper presents a new walking support robot equipped with not only two velocity-based safety devices but also two torque-based safety devices. These safety devices consist of only mechanical components without actuators, controllers, or batteries. The torque-based safety device can switch off all the motors after detecting an unexpected motor torque. The usefulness of the torque-based safety devices is experimentally examined.
