Prototype design of robotic mobility aid to assist elderly´s standing-sitting, walking, and wheelchair driving in daily life

In this paper, a robotic mobility aid was proposed, which aims at assisting the elderly´s active mobility in a daily life. A prototype of the devices was designed and constructed, and its mechanical structure and control system configuration was described. It consists of a wheeled balancing mobile platform, a 3 D.O.F waist part with a parallel mechanism, and a dual manipulator with 4 D.O.F. The elderly´s physical motions to move, standing-sitting and walking, from such a bed to the other place could be assisted by the device. In addition, it is also capable of assisting a wheelchair driving by using the dual manipulator. The waist part is able to support user´s heavy weight owing to the parallel link mechanism, and to assist user´s motion based on the information from a 6 axis force/torque sensor. Since the wheeled balancing mobile platform with an overturning prevention equipment has a compact structure, a user can easily and safely moves even in a complicated environment. Pitch and roll motions were demonstrated by the distributed control system implemented on the prototype robotic mobility aid.