A Novel Wearable Mobility Device Adapting to Posture of Wearer and Environments with Steps

Abstract

Personal mobility devices that can extend mobility functions of healthy person have been developed. However, conventional personal mobility device has some aspects that restrict the mobility functions of person since these devices have no ability to go up and down steps and to use freely because of portability. Thus, we propose a novel concept of mobility device that has ability to wear and to take advantage of the walking functions of person. It seems that it is possible to extend the mobility functions even in environments with steps. In this paper, we propose and develop a novel wearable mobility device that can wear, and go up and down steps. Our wearable mobility device consists of seat, frame, in-wheel motors and casters. The seat which has two load-cells is used as an interface for connecting a wearer to our mobility device and controlling our mobility device. The frame has two free joints each leg. Thus, the frame can realize states of sitting and standing. We carried out experiments to confirm that a participant with our wearable mobility device has the ability to walk, go up and down steps, and run with in-wheel motors. As the results of experiments, our wearable mobility device has the abilities to walk, go up and down steps, and run with in-wheel motors. In conclusion, we developed a novel wearable mobility device and confirmed that our wearable mobility device has feasibility to extend mobility functions of healthy person by adapting to human posture and steps.