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Development of a person-following robotic assist walker with compliant-control arbitrated role-switching

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Abstract

To help ease the caregiving burden that comes with population aging, we proposed a bistable control system for walking-assist robots in which the transition between two stable control modes is governed using a compliance-controlled handle. The first modeis where the robot takes the role of the leader and operates autonomously by following a target person. Whereas in the second mode, the user is the leader, and the robot follows the intent of the user. In these two stable control modes, because either the leader or the robot is fully in control, there is minimal conflict of intent, thereby reducing physical and cognitive load of the user as well as minimizing competition between the intent of the user and that of the robot. When there is a conflict, the robot and the user express their intent physically by rotating the compliance-controlled handle. This compliance-controlled handle arbitrates between the user’s and the robot’s intent and decides whether to transition to a different stable control mode (switching roles) depending on the angle rotated.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by JSPS KAKENHI grant numbers JP19K04296, 21K17791, and 21H04898.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saga University, 1 Honjo-machi, Saga, 840-8502, Japan

    Wen Liang Yeoh, Ryosuke Miyata, Osamu Fukuda, Nobuhiko Yamaguchi & Hiroshi Okumura

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  1. Wen Liang Yeoh
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  2. Ryosuke Miyata
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  3. Osamu Fukuda
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  4. Nobuhiko Yamaguchi
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  5. Hiroshi Okumura
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Correspondence to Wen Liang Yeoh.

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This work was presented in part at the joint symposium of the 27th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, the 7th International Symposium on BioComplexity, and the 5th International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics (Online, January 25–27, 2022).

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Yeoh, W.L., Miyata, R., Fukuda, O. et al. Development of a person-following robotic assist walker with compliant-control arbitrated role-switching. Artif Life Robotics 28, 553–559 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-023-00864-0

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