Human balance measurement and human posture assist robot design

A human posture assist robot for elderly and disabled persons, with badly balanced physique is proposed. The robot has a structure with two joints of an ankle, a waist, and a foot force pad. The robot can raise the patient when he/she happens to fall down by sensing the body balance. The human balance is detected by a foot force pad where strain gages are embedded. We have fabricated the scale-down experimental setup to confirm the principle of the human posture assist robot. The program developed can simulate the responses of the classical control and H/sub 2/ control.