• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.147-156
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• 2017

The white cane, walking assistive device of visually impaired person, has disadvantages for acquiring the information by contacting obstacles directly and detecting low obstacle on the ground. Recently, new devices have been developing to solve these problems, but these were not widely used due to high price and appearance. Therefore, in this study, we developed two types of walking assistive shoes which were manufactured with infrared sensors, pressure sensors and vibrating motors. Two types of shoes were classified with single sensor (SS) and double sensor (DS) type according to the number of infrared sensor. To evaluate the effectiveness, we compared required time and number of collisions during walking with walking assistive shoes and white cane on obstacle area. As the results, required time was increased than white cane while number of collisions was decreased when walking with developed walking assistive shoes. In addition, required time and number of collisions was more reduced when using walking assistive device than white cane. Therefore, we suggests that developed walking assistive shoes can a great help to provide safe walking condition and reducing time to adapt new types of walking assistive shoes.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.553-559
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• 2015

The purpose of this research is to develop a gait assistive device to enhance the gait stability and training efficiency of stroke patients. The configuration of this device is mainly composed of a motored wheel and a single cane whose lower end is attached to a motored wheel frame. A patient can feel haptic information from continuous ground contact from the wheel while walking through the grip handle. In addition, the wheeled cane can avoid using excessive use of the patient's upper limb for weight support and motivate the patient to use a paralyzed lower limb more actively. Moreover, the proposed device can provide intuitive and safe user interaction by integrating a force sensor and a tilt sensor equipped to the cane frame, and a switch sensor at the cane's handle. The admittance control has been implemented for the patient to change the walking speed intuitively by using the interaction forces at the handle. A hemi-paretic stroke patient participated in the walking assistive experiments as a pilot study to verify the effectiveness of the proposed haptic cane system. The results showed that the patient could improve walking speed and muscle activations during walking with a constant speed mode of the haptic cane. Moreover, the patient could maintain the preferred walking speeds and gait stability regardless of the magnitude of resistance forces with the admittance control mode of the haptic cane. The proposed robotic gait assistive device with a simple and intuitive mechanism can provide efficient gait training modes to stroke patients with high possibilities of widespread utilizations.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.26 no.6_3
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• pp.1315-1323
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• 2023

Rehabilitation assistive devices not only assist the rehabilitation therapy and daily life of the disabled and the elderly, but also assist the labor of their caregivers, so various functions are required to improve their quality of life. In this study, a design method considering its practicality is introduced for an active rehabilitation assistive device that can perform both standing and walking assistance by driving various actuators. For this purpose, the force required to assist standing was calculated using statics with the body segmentation method. Also, the overturning stability of the device was verified for various physical conditions and postures. The actuator in the active rehabilitation assistive device was operated by a patient using a graphical user interface in an embedded computer and a touch panel for easy usage. The detailed design was performed for implementation through the help of 3D-CAD and the finite element analysis, and a prototype was produced. Finally, it was proven that the design goal was satisfied by experimental validation.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.23-28
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• 2010

Case of patients with weakness in cardiopulmonary system, other ambulatory function is normal, but oxygen supply function is problem. So they need reduce energy consumption for gait by assistance system. In this study, we designed and developed walking assistant device which helps flexion and extension of hip joint for cardiopulmonary patients. There are two motors, each at the left and right side of pelvis, providing torque to the hip joint. The target angle of the flexion and extension in the hip joint is set according to the normal gait. As a result, reduction of energy consumption was 14.8% by gait assistive device.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.936-942
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• 2005

Recently the exoskeletal power assistive equipment which is a kind of wearable robot has been widely developed to help the human body motion. For the elderly people and patients, however, some limits exist due to the weight and volume of the equipments. As a feasible solution, a tendon-driven exoskeletal power assistive device fur the lower body, and caster walker are proposed in this research. Since the caster walker carries the heavy items, the weight and volume of the wearable exoskeleton are minimized. The key control is used to generate the joint torque required to assist motions such as sitting, standing and walking. Experiments were performed for several motions and the EMG sensors were used to measure the magnitude of assistance. When the motion of sitting down and standing up was compared with and without wearing the proposed device, the $25\%$ assistance was acquired.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.223-228
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• 2011

In this paper, we proposed a technique to recognize three states in stance phase of gait cycle. Walking assistive devices are used to help the elderly people walk or to monitor walking behavior of the disabled persons. For the effective assistance, they adopt an intelligent sensor system to understand user's current state in walking. There are three states in stance phase; Loading Response, Midstance, and Terminal Stance. We developed a foot pressure sensor using 24 FSRs (Force Sensing/Sensitive Resistors). The foot pressure patterns were integrated through the interpolation of FSR cell array. The pressure patterns were processed to get the trajectories of COM (Center of Mass). Using the trajectories of COM of foot pressure, we can recognize the three states of stance phase. The experimental results show the effective recognition of stance phase and the possibility of usage on the walking assistive device for better control and/or foot pressure monitoring.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 2007

A compass device which indicates the right direction using the recorded voice was developed to assist the people who are blind when they are walking and moving to somewhere. The developed voice compass consists of a sensing module which recognizes the terrestrial magnetism with magnetic sensor, voice recorder IC, speaker and microprocessor which controlled all the components. It has 32 directions resolution and can continuously indicates the progressing direction with established time interval for the user convenience. It can help walking of the blind people and designed to be used in various sports and leisure. The performance of the developed device was verified by experiment with person who are blind.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.299-303
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• 2014

Demand of moving auxiliary equipment has increased recently to an increase in the elderly population. pedestrian demand is either moving auxiliary equipment are also increasing. regional migration, such as pedestrian and the elderly and patients is a device to support the sharing received walking the weight of inconvenient people. In this paper, by mounting the electric function to the current manual walking, to prepare the electric walking to support the user's walking. the design applies a lightweight folding structure so that it can be moved to a ride at long distances, were fabricated.

• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2007

Walking is not only an essential component of the human mobility, but also is a good exercise. Inability to walk freely can reduce an individual's quality of life and independence substantially. Being a relatively low impact activity, walking is particularly good for the elderly and research has shown that regular walking in the elderly reduces the chance of fall-related injuries and mental diseases as well. In spite of the documented benefits of regular walking, it is still difficult to walk without the aid of assistive devices for the frail elderly who have lower extremity problems. Assistive walking devices(AWD), such as crutches, canes, hiking-poles, T-Poles and walkers, are often prescribed to the elderly to make their walking be safe and efficient. Many researchers have demonstrated the effects of AWDs such as reducing lower extremity loading, improved dynamic/gait stability, yet, no study has been done for gait pattern when the elderly gait with AWDs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine whether T-Poles, one of the AWDs, change the elderly gait pattern. Eight community-dwelling female elderly participated in this study. Laboratory kinematics during walking with T-Poles(PW) and with out T-Poles(NPW) was assessed. PW showed significant increase in step width, stride length, gait velocity and decrease in swing time. No significances were found in lower body joint angles but meaningful trend and pattern were found. Maybe the reason was due to the participants. Our participants were healthy enough so that the effect of T-Poles was minimum. PW also showed typical gait phases which are no single support phase during a gait cycle. It indicates that walking with T-Poles may guarantee safe and confident walking to the frail elderly.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.451-456
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• 2020

This study compared the utility of walking aids, and activities of daily life depending on the ability of people with mobility disabilities to use walking aids. Data were extracted from the Korea Welfare Panel Study in 2014. Data of 435,947 individuals were analyzed using chi-square and t-tests. The findings from this study showed that disabled persons who cannot use walking aids independently were more likely to have a severe disability level and a lower level of daily activities than the independent group. The level of social participation and leisure activities were also significantly lower in the dependent than the independent group. Therefore, walking aids should be tailored for individuals depending on their level of independence for using walking aids.