Walking support system based on musical exercise therapy

Mutual adaptation process in musical communication is often used for walking support and rehabilitation. But this kind of supporting system is not realized yet. So the purpose of this research is to construct walking support system as a musical communication process. Our strategy is to extend Walk-Mate system, which realizes mutual adaptation process between human and virtual walker by exchanging step sound. We replaced this step sound to the music performance and showed the effectiveness in the experiment of walking support. The stability of gate cycle was improved in the both music performance condition and step sound condition. But in the music condition, the improvement of stability remained after the support walking. This result shows the effectiveness of this proposed system as a walking support.