Preliminary experiments for postural control using wearable-CMG

Since the population of elderly gradually increases recently in developed country, and it causes an increase of burdens to care workers, there exists a strong demand for walking assist devices. The falling down of elderly may cause serious injuries which results in significant decrease of quality of life. Conventional wearable walking support devices are not easy for elderly to wear. The authors have developed a wearable device using Wearable Control Moment Gyroscopes (Wearable-CMG) to prevent falling down. In this paper, motion equation of CMGs and steering law for driving multiple CMGs, postural control method for an inverted pendulum model are presented. Especially, some estimation method to control human posture only utilized by gyroscopes are applied, and compare them in preliminary experiments.