A new silver robot platform for the elderly and the handicapped: SpiderbotTM-posture balancing and muscle strengthening exercises

摘要

By using a new type of silver robot called SpiderBotTM, posture balancing and muscle strengthening exercises were presented. Unlike mobile robots on a floor, SpiderBotTM is conceptualized to generate full mobility in a room and to have higher payload while generating six degrees-of-freedom for assisting daily lives of the elderly and the handicapped. A preliminary prototype of SpiderBotTM has been constructed by using incompletely restrained wire mechanism and simple control algorithms were implemented for two types of exercises for elderly people's health improvement. One is a posture balancing exercise that prevents from falling to any directions. And the other is muscle strengthening exercise that uses the SpiderBotTM as a weight lifting mechanism. Preliminary experimental results show that the proposed new silver robot platform is used for such exercises.