並列摘要
As population is aging rapidly, elderly care has become one of the most important issues. In order to reduce the occurrence of falling down in elderly walking, assistive walkers are normally used. In this study intelligent handle has been designed and installed to a commercially walker. The intelligent handle enables to the assistive walker to recognize the user’s intention so that timely response to prevent the user from accidental falls. The intelligent handle is equipped by a force sensor to measure the exerted forces/torques by the user and the human intention is then analyzed. Subsequently the walker is under passive control mode, in which the brakes of the walker are controlled by servo motors to provide responsive motion assistance, such as turning, speed deceleration and emergent stop. Preliminary experimental results have shown that the proposed scenarios has the potential to reduce accidental falling down for the elderly.