Research on steady characteristics of human-robot system for preventing elderly falls during walking

Due to the ever-increasing demand of caregivers and the high cost of nursing the elderly, researchers have been developing the elderly assistant robots (EARs) for assisting the elderly. To improve the safety of the elderly during walking, the steady characteristics of the EAR are discussed for preventing elderly falls during walking in this paper. Initially, the walking elderly was modeled as an inverted pendulum, and the steadiness region of the human and the general elderly fall conditions were obtained. The dynamics of the human-robot system were derived for preventing the general elderly falls. Also, the steadiness of the human and the robot were analyzed, respectively. Finally, experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the models. The results demonstrated that the system met the requirements of steadiness, and hence, the designed robot could prevent elderly fall during walking. Thus, this study provides a theoretical basis for the effective control and the practical application of the EARs.