• ETRI Journal
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• 제40권4호
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• pp.522-530
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• 2018

In this study, we developed a robotic walker that actively controls its speed and direction of movement according to the user's gait intention. Sensor fusion between a low-cost light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor and inertia measurement units (IMUs) helps determine the user's gait intention. The LiDAR determines the walking direction by detecting both knees, and the IMUs attached on each foot obtain the angular rate of the gait. The user's gait intention is given as the directional angle and the speed of movement. The two motors in the robotic walker are controlled with these two variables, which represent the user's gait intention. The estimated direction angle is verified by comparison with a Kinect sensor that detects the centroid trajectory of both the user's feet. We validated the robotic walker with an experiment by controlling it using the estimated gait intention.

• 제어로봇시스템학회논문지
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• 제14권7호
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• pp.672-678
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• 2008

This paper proposes a new rehabilitation robot with upper and lower limb connections for gait training. As humans change a walking speed, their nervous systems adapt muscle activation patterns to modify arm swing for the appropriate frequency. By analyzing this property, we can find a relation between arm swinging and lower limb motions. Thus, the lower limb motion can be controlled by the arm swing for walking speed adaptation according to a patent's intension. This paper deals with the design aspects of the suggested gait rehabilitation robot, including a trajectory planning and a control strategy. The suggested robot is mainly composed of upper limb and lower limb devices, a body support system. The lower limb device consists of a slider device and two 2-dof footpads to allow walking training at uneven and various terrains. The upper limb device consists of an arm swing handle and switches to use as a user input device for walking. The body support system will partially support a patient's weight to allow the upper limb motions. Finally, we showed simulation results for the designed trajectory and controller using a dynamic simulation tool.