Design and control of an intelligent walking-aid robot

An intelligent walking-aid robot is presented for walking assistance, training and rehabilitation of the elderly. The robot is intended to provide physical support and mobility aid for the old people during their walking based on recognizing their motion intentions online. A force measuring system comprised of force sensing resisters (FSRs) is designed to obtain the interaction forces between the user and the robot. The user's motion intention is then estimated by analyzing the relationship between the measured interaction forces and human intention force/torque. Further the estimated intention is used to guide the admittance based motion control of robot. To ensure a safe walking, a laser range finder (LRF) is used to detect the distance between the robot and the user's legs. A distance restraint control is also designed and taken into action when the distance is found beyond a safe threshold. Experiments were conducted and the results verified the effectiveness of the developed robot system and control methods.