MSc Thesis Proposal – Model and control of a multipurpose assistive robot vehicle

In industrialized countries, regional disparities in healthcare and welfare services, increased medical expense caused by aging societies and shortages of medical staff have become serious problems. In Sweden, it is expected that about 25% of Swedes population will be older than 65 years old by 2060 [1]. For this purpose, robot technology (RT) is expected to be an important key to find solutions to these problems. In particular, different walking-aid robots have been proposed during the last decades. In particular, the walking-aid robots can be classified in two main groups according to the mobility factor [2]: active-type walkers (driven by a servo motor) and passive-type walkers (driven by a servo brake). However, the physical support is provided by means of a fixed length and stiffness aluminum stick and cannot be customized depending on the needs of the specific user and environmental conditions. From those researches; a special focus has been done in terms to increase the level of multimodal interaction, sensing and control to facilitate the perception of the environment for a better guidance and provide a static physical support to avoid falling down. However, dynamic physical support, the adaptability to the user/task needs and the multipurpose design concept has been scarcely studied.