The assistive walker using hand haptics

The purpose of this research is to develop the sight assistive walker using hand haptic information. The feature of the system is user centered system. This system never gives information while user doesn´t manipulate the system. Only when user walks and manipulates the system, the system give an environmental information. Therefore, this system needs user´s active intention for moving. The main important tasks while walking such as environmental recognition, path planning and locomotion are made by the user. The system supports a user to create a mental map by only giving the environmental information. The system configurations are as follows. This system is something like a cane, and it has a small passive mobile platform on its tip. The LRF (Laser Range Finder) is used for environmental sensing. The powder brakes are used for generating passive brake forces. In order to let the mobile platform move both lateral and back-forward, the four omni-directional wheels are adopted. By generating brake force based on the distance to the obstacles in the moving direction, user can recognize the environment through the hand haptic information. In particular, this paper shows the design concept, system configuration and experimental results to verify the supporting function.