Abstract
Many elderly people use walkers or walking trolleys to facilitate walking. However, characteristically, such walkers can hardly ascend even a small step. Elderly people tend to fall and injure themselves when they try to raise their walker onto a step. This paper attempts to clarify the cause of the difficulty that elderly experience when ascending small steps. The relation between a step’s height and the radius of the front wheel was derived in terms of the critical condition by which the elderly cart can or cannot ascend the step was determined. A simple L-shaped beam was used to evaluate the components of the contact force arisen when a front wheel runs against a step. The results of this paper show the principle of the L-shaped beam method for the measurement of the contact force. Furthermore, the experimental results agreed well with the theoretical conditions obtained by this study. By using a wheel placed in the middle of the walker, a step-ascending mechanism was devised so as to ascend steps without difficulty. In conclusion, this paper elucidates the principle of the step-ascending mechanism.
