A Handle Robot for Providing Bodily Support to Elderly Persons

Age-related loss of mobility and an increased risk of falling remain major obstacles for older adults to live independently. Many elderly people lack the coordination and strength necessary to perform activities of daily living, such as getting out of bed or stepping into a bathtub. A traditional solution is to install grab bars around the home. For assisting in bathtub transitions, grab bars are fixed to a bathroom wall. However, they are often too far to reach and stably support the user; the installation locations of grab bars are constrained by the room layout and are often suboptimal. In this paper, we present a mobile robot that provides an older adult with a handlebar located anywhere in space - “Handle Anywhere”. The robot consists of an omnidirectional mobile base attached to a reposition able handlebar. We further develop a methodology to optimally place the handle to provide the maximum support for the elderly user while performing common postural changes. A cost function with a trade-off between mechanical advantage and manipulability of the user's arm was optimized in terms of the location of the handlebar relative to the user. The methodology requires only a sagittal plane video of the elderly user performing the postural change, and thus is rapid, scalable, and uniquely customizable to each user. A proof-of-concept prototype was built, and the optimization algorithm for handle location was validated experimentally.