日本福祉工学会誌 論文 概要日本福祉工学会誌 Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 26-33 (2009) |
With super-aging society, it is requested to establish assistive technology and develop welfare devices intended for the enhancement of quality of life in senior citizens and handicapped persons in order to enable senior citizens to be independently involved in social participation. In particular it is an important issue to develop devices supporting their walking that is the basic motion in their daily life. For this reason, it is hoped to develop special support equipment for senior citizens or handicapped persons to move. As a device implementing independent assistance to senior citizens, we developed an assistive cart for facilities with an interface available to them, which would progressively be developed as a device to assist them in walking. In this study the computer mannequin was used for the design of walk support machines. We developed an assistive cart to measure senior citizens walking and drive the motor based on the information on this measurement in order to assist him or her properly in his or her gait. This result, the walk support machines which can be used for the elderly people have developed by us. And we have performed field evaluation of that.
Key words: human dynamics, biomechanics, computer mannequin, bipedal walking, elderly people