Navigation of robotic platform for gait disorders monitoring

摘要

This paper is focused on control of a six-wheeled robotic platform used for gait pattern recording. Navigation of the platform has to be very precise to keep the path of the platform as narrow as possible and to maintain the distance between the subject and the platform to capture the gait pattern in the most natural way. A key component of the whole robotic platform is an MS Kinect v2 device which tracks the patients' gait. Kinect also provides the information about the distance between the robot and the patient to a microcontroller which is responsible for the wheels' control. To obtain straight trajectory, there is a camera pointing forwards on the front of the robot and a set of two beacons at the end of the operation area to be tracked by the camera. All data obtained from the camera, Kinect and encoders (attached to each wheel) are used during an offline reconstruction of the patients' gait. To process and save the data form Kinect, camera and other controllers in real-time a special multithread application was developed.