Pilot Experiments with the Human-Friendly Walking Assisting Robot Vehicle (hWALK)

摘要

Up to now, the embodiment of bodily-kinaesthetic, perceptual and cognitive capabilities for assistive robots has been scarcely studied. This research aims to incorporate and develop the concept of robotic human science and to enable its application in a human-friendly robot for assistive purposes. The author has introduced the development of a human-friendly walking assist robot vehicle designed to provide physical support to the elderly. The proposed system is composed by two-wheeled inverted pendulum mobile robot, a 3-DOFs desktop haptic interface, a mobile computer and a wireless module for communication purposes. Pilot experiments with healthy volunteers were carried out to verify the dynamic stability of the proposed system as well as the possibility to compensate the height error of the HI gripper under uneven terrain conditions.