Abstract
Along with the steadily rising elderly population in Japan, the number of aged persons with difficulties in walking is increasing. This paper proposes a walking support machine with the safety devices, which provide patients with partial body weight support and prevent patients from falling. The powder brakes, which can control the torques, are used as the devices to prevent patient's falling. The constant force springs are used in order to provide the patient with partial body weight support. Since the safety devices consist of passive components with no active components, the walking support machine is essentially safe. The usefulness of the safety devices is experimentally examined.
