A lower-limb power-assist robot with perception-assist.

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.