Modeling and Simulation of Transporting Elderly Posture of Multifunctional Elderly-Assistant and Walking-Assistant Robot

The author's lab proposed a new multifunctional robot that can help the elderly people to making his daily activities and improving the life quality for the elderly. The robot has two major functions: running as an intelligent wheelchair, and walking like a smart cane. For improving its wheelchair properties, the modeling, simulation and vibration analysis of the elderly-robot system transporting elderly posture of elderly-assistant and walking assistant robot (EWR) is investigated in this paper. The dynamic model composed of two parts: elderly body which modeled as two rigid masses, one for the head and the other for the body connected together by spring-damper system, and robot which modeled as a lumped mass with springs and dampers. The elderly-robot system is subjected to disturbance inputs from the road roughness, its vibration characteristics are analyzed by MATLAB simulation. The simulation results show the stability and the performance of the robot with fall prevention.