Hayashi Yoshiaki, Kiguchi Kazuo
Dept. Advanced Technology Fusion, Saga University, Saga, Japan.
IEEE Int Conf Rehabil Robot. 2011;2011:5975445. doi: 10.1109/ICORR.2011.5975445.
In order to assist the motion in the daily lives of physically weak persons such as elderly persons, many kinds of power-assist robots have been developed. In the case of some physically weak persons, the ability to perceive the environment is sometimes deteriorated also. A method of perception-assist has been proposed to assist not only the user's motion but also the user's interaction with an environment, by applying the modification force to the user's motion if it is necessary. In this paper, the perception-assist for a lower-limb power-assist exoskeleton robot is proposed. In the daily life, the walking is very important for persons to achieve desired tasks. Basically, the robot assists the user's muscle force according to the user's motion intention which is estimated based on EMG signals. If the robot has found problems which might lead the user to dangerous situation such as the falling down, the robot tries to modify the user's motion in addition to the ordinal power-assists to make the user walk properly. Since the user might fall down by the effect of the additional modification force of the perception-assist, the robot automatically prevents the user from falling down by considering ZMP (Zero Moment Point). The effectiveness of the proposed method has been evaluated by performing experiments.
为了辅助老年人等身体虚弱者在日常生活中的行动，已经开发了多种助力机器人。对于一些身体虚弱者来说，他们感知环境的能力有时也会下降。人们提出了一种感知辅助方法，通过在必要时对用户的动作施加修正力，不仅辅助用户的行动，还辅助用户与环境的交互。本文提出了一种针对下肢助力外骨骼机器人的感知辅助方法。在日常生活中，行走对于人们完成期望的任务非常重要。基本上，机器人根据基于肌电信号估计出的用户运动意图来辅助用户的肌肉力量。如果机器人发现可能导致用户处于危险情况（例如下跌）的问题，除了常规的助力之外，机器人还会尝试修正用户的动作，以使用户能够正常行走。由于用户可能会因感知辅助的额外修正力而跌倒，机器人会通过考虑零力矩点（ZMP）来自动防止用户跌倒。通过进行实验评估了所提方法的有效性。
