Accompanied Movement Algorithm of Cane Robot

Abstract

In clinical gait training for elderly or physically challenged people, it is one of the most important functions for walking assistance devices to enhance physical ability quickly. Particularly, postural sway of patients causes instability of walking. To deal with this problem, we developed the cane type robot which can move in cooperation with the user. In this paper, we introduce the accompanied movement algorithm of the cane robot. In order to control the relative position of the robot to the accompanied person as using a normal cane, we make an artificial potential field. As an attractive potential, we use a capture point which is used in a humanoid. The results of numerical simulation using a measured human walking posture are shown to verify the usefulness of the proposed method.