Abstract
For both maintaining and improving walking ability of the elderly or the injured, walking with an aid is most effective. The walking aids in today's market are primarily for helping people on a flat surface such as on hospital corridors. However, to widen the range of terrain on which the aids can be used to include rough pavements or bumps is necessary to assure the users' daily self-sufficient life. This requirement brings some challenging tasks to structural designers. The aid structure should be stiff enough to give the user sure support feeling. At the same time, it should protect the user's hands from unnecessary vibration caused by bumps. Improving stability without major weight increase is another challenge. To solve these problems, both analytical and experimental vibration mode analyses were conducted on a typical conventional walking aid. Combined with operating condition vibration monitoring and multi-body-dynamics simulations of the aid's motion on a bump, the structural weak points were found.
