Abstract
The progressive aging of the population has led to a greater need for devices to aid locomotion. Existing devices, as used during recovering and rehabilitation phases, are often bulky and cannot be easily migrated from hospital to domestic environments.
A compact lightweight and minimally intrusive robotic cane for locomotion aid favour fast recovering and rehabilitation and which is the leitmotiv of the paper. The cane can assist users with mild locomotion disabilities, e.g., in the final stages of rehabilitation processes, to maintain and recover balance in standing and walking situations.
The device has unicycle kinematics and adapts its movement to the locomotion of the user. The mathematical model, control, and hardware are detailed in the paper. Performance is assessed through experiments with real users with and without mobility impairments. The results obtained strongly confirm the viability of the concept.
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Acknowledgements
This research was partially supported by project LARSyS-FCT Project UIDB/ 50009/2020, Serviços Partilhados do Ministério da Saúde (SPMS), and Agrupamento de Centros de Saúde Loures-Odivelas (ACES Loures-Odivelas).
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Neves, G., Sequeira, J.S., Santos, C. (2022). Development of a Robotic Cane for Mild Locomotion Assistance. In: Kim, J., et al. Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications 6. RiTA 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 429. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97672-9_14
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