Gait-adaptive Method of an Ankle-assist Robot for Walking Promotion

Abstract

As the population ages, the number of the elderly with systemic diseases like stroke increases. In order to avoid strokes, various wearable walking assistance robots have been developed. However, the most of them are bulky, heavy, and poorly practical. For the elderly users in this study, we developed a compact ankle assistive robot to promote walking exercise. The robot can help the user establish a healthy gait by guiding proper motion and timing while just supporting the ankle joint. To assist users, the robot offers faster-than-ankle movements. With a graphical user interface (GUI), users can change the robot's settings to suit their needs. Furthermore, we proposed a gait-adaptive method for ankle assistive robots to adapt to the user’s changing gait for providing more accurate walking assistance. Finally, the evaluation experiment demonstrated the positive feasibility of gait adaptation. The advantages of the proposed methods include low cost and simplicity of implementation.