Development of a Test Method for Assisted Walking Trolleys

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Manufacturers have recently been developing assistive walking devices with electric motors, based on rollators and walking trolleys, in Japan. These assistive devices have electric motors to assist walking on sloped surfaces. Furthermore, they have a function that automatically suppresses the speed on downhill slopes. Here a walking experiment was conducted to investigate the speed at which the suppression function needed to be applied in various walking conditions. The subjects in the experiment walked while leaning on the assistive device, applying forces of 37 (horizontal) and 204 N (vertical) on downhill slopes. Furthermore, an analysis of the walking data obtained from traditional walking trolleys revealed that 80% of the subjects walked at a speed of 2.5 km/h or more. Two experiments were conducted to develop a test method that analyzed the performance of the suppression function on downhill slopes. The proposed test method results yielded sufficient accuracy.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Abstract
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. WALKING SPEED EXPERIMENT
• 3. LEANING FORCE EXPERIMENT
• 4. TEST METHOD
• 5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
• 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• REFERENCES