Prototype design of robotic mobility aid to assist elderly's standing-sitting, walking, and wheelchair driving in daily life

In this paper, a robotic mobility aid was proposed, which aims at assisting the elderly's active mobility in a daily life. A prototype of the devices was designed and constructed, and its mechanical structure and control system configuration was described. It consists of a wheeled balancing mobile platform, a 3 D.O.F waist part with a parallel mechanism, and a dual manipulator with 4 D.O.F. The elderly's physical motions to move, standing-sitting and walking, from such a bed to the other place could be assisted by the device. In addition, it is also capable of assisting a wheelchair driving by using the dual manipulator. The waist part is able to support user's heavy weight owing to the parallel link mechanism, and to assist user's motion based on the information from a 6 axis force/torque sensor. Since the wheeled balancing mobile platform with an overturning prevention equipment has a compact structure, a user can easily and safely moves even in a complicated environment. Pitch and roll motions were demonstrated by the distributed control system implemented on the prototype robotic mobility aid.