Naoaki Tsuda, Ryo Hashimoto, Reiya Hiasa, Susumu Tarao, Yoshihiko Nomura, and Norihiko Kato
Crutch walk, Body parts motion, Measurement, Guidance, Motion capturing
Patients who are forced to use axillary crutches by sudden accidents usually use them temporally. Although the time period during which the patients require crutches is short, it is desirable that such patients are properly instructed on the proper method of using crutches when the patients start to use crutches. In this paper, a guiding robot for crutch beginners was developed. This robot mainly consists of the Roomba vacuum cleaner and the Kinect sensor. It was designed to move ahead of a crutch user by using the Roomba's moving mechanism, and to measure the crutch user's body parts motions by using the Kinect sensor, simultaneously. Some experiments were carried out, and it was confirmed that the developed robot can lead the walking crutch user with keeping a constant distance, and it can determine the before/after stride ratio of the crutch user. The before/after stride ratio will be efficient to evaluate the walk motion stability.
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