Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : Mechanical Engineering Congress,Japan
Date : September 11, 2016 - September 14, 2016
Various walking assistance devices which promote rehabilitation and exercise for elderly have been developed. However, these devices can't support walking for exercise, because many elderly feels fatigue and bored in assisted walking. Therefore, the aim of our current study is to assist not only physically but also mentally elderly walkers to keep up their motivation. Concretely, we propose a walking promotion method that walkers listen to the beat sound adjusted according to their emotions with the ankle support assistance device. In order to confirm the effectiveness of the method, we conducted two experiments. The first experiment has four conditions where walkers have the device assist or not and the beat sound assist or not. As a result, the gait was improved with the device and sound assist where target cadences were adjusted according to their walking cycle. The second experiment has two conditions where walkers assisted sound adjusted according to their emotions or not. As a result, awakening levels perceived by the walkers remarked higher than ones in usual walking. These results showed the effectiveness of the method and possibility of the control of the emotion while walking.