Many blind people require travel aids to navigate in unknown environments. However, the majority of the corresponding devices are not designed for people with walking disabilities. In this paper, we present a smart walker that does not only provide walking assistance but also enables blind users with mobility impairment to avoid obstacles. By leveraging existing robotics technologies, our syste...

In a quasi-experimental pre- and postdesign, we examined the effect of rollator use on functional rehabilitation outcome in geriatric patients.From a sample of 458 geriatric inpatients, we matched 30 subjects who were not using assistive devices in their everyday lives but received a wheeled walker at the time of hospital admission (first-time user group) according to their admission scores on ...

Despite the fact that non-level walking is known to be important for prosthesis fitting, its clinical significance has not been investigated. In this study, the acceptable prosthesis alignment ranges of six subjects with transtibial amputation on level and non-level walking were determined and compared. With the aid of a recently developed alignment jig, prosthesis fitting was performed for eac...

A hierarchical shared-control method of the walking-aid robot for both human motion intention recognition and the obstacle emergency-avoidance method based on artificial potential field (APF) is proposed in this paper. The human motion intention is obtained from the interaction force measurements of the sensory system composed of 4 force-sensing registers (FSR) and a torque sensor. Meanwhile, a...

The sit to transfer assisting for elderly patients using an intelligent walkingaid is presented. This assistive device provides physical support to aid elderly with physical impairment during both the walk and the sit-to-stand transfer. In this paper, we will focus on the sit-to-stand transfer function and more precisely on the trajectory generation of the assistive device handles using interpo...

A three-step planning method is proposed, aiming at the redundancy of DOFs and the complexity of a biped robot’s gait planning. The method presents a quick procedure on the planning of robot’s walking gait, and it is used in the walking gait planning of a biped robot, the HIT-Robocean. A robot virtual prototype model firstly is set up with the aid of the softwares, namely, Solidworks, Matlab, a...

In this paper, we analyze the micro-Doppler signatures of elderly gait patterns in the presence of walking aids using radars. The signatures are based on real data experiments conducted in a laboratory environment using human subjects walking with a walking cane and a walker. Short-time Fourier transform is used to provide the local signal behavior over frequency and to detail the changes in th...

The study of neuromuscular activity at very slow walking speeds may lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying speed regulation during walking, and may aid the interpretation of gait data in patients who walk slowly. Extreme reductions in walking speed will cause changes in locomotor task demands that may eventually result in modifications of the patterning of muscle activity t...