An Adaptive Guidance System for Robotic Walking Aids

Abstract

In the last years, several robotic walking aids to assist elderly users with mobility constraints and thus to react to the growing number of elderly persons in our society have been developed. In order to ensure good support for the user, the robotic walker should adapt to the motion of the user while at the same time not losing the target out of sight. Even though some of the existing active robotic walkers are able to guide their user to a target, during guidance, the input of the user is not considered sufficiently. Therefore a new adaptive guidance system for robotic walkers has been developed. It is able to lead the walking aid user to a given target while considering his inputs during guidance and adapting the path respectively. The guidance system has been implemented on the mobile robot assistant Care-O-bot II and a field test was done in an old people’s residence proving the correct function and usefulness of the guidance system.