System assisting walking and carrying daily necessities with an overhead robot arm for in-home elderlies

In Japan, since society is rapidly aging, equipment to assist daily living of an in-home elderly becomes important. Rehabilitation robotics or mechatronics is one solution to realize such equipment. This paper describes a prototype development of an overhead robot arm to assist walking and carry daily necessities for the in-home elderly. The robot arm is mounted on a rail for effective use in Japanese houses, which have many differences in level and complicated passageways. The elderly is held by his body under his arms by this robot arm. It operates by detecting the forces which he applies to the support part. On the other hand, it is necessary for one not only to assist walking for elderlies with walking difficulties, but also to carry out daily necessities for bedridden elderlies. The authors thought of the system for carrying daily necessities as one of the functional extensions of the robot arm. The elderlies owning the robot arm use the system assisting walking and the system carrying daily necessities as jointly as possible and use the robot arm by exchanging a part. In addition, it is necessary for these systems to attract the elderlies' interest and give them an incentive to use it, because it is hard for the elderlies to be mentally receptive towards a mere artificial system. The authors adapted to these systems a TV phone to enable the elderlies to be able to communicate with other people.