The Infona portal uses cookies, i.e. strings of text saved by a browser on the user's device. The portal can access those files and use them to remember the user's data, such as their chosen settings (screen view, interface language, etc.), or their login data. By using the Infona portal the user accepts automatic saving and using this information for portal operation purposes. More information on the subject can be found in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. By closing this window the user confirms that they have read the information on cookie usage, and they accept the privacy policy and the way cookies are used by the portal. You can change the cookie settings in your browser.
Robotic walkers are assistive robotic devices that provide mobility assistance, in a domestic or clinical scenario, to individuals suffering from a gait disorder, being age related or due to injuries, surgery, or diseases. Walkers also provide a significant potential for lower limb rehabilitation. In this paper, we present a novel multimodal robotic walker platform, the ISR-AIWALKER, where innovative...
This paper presents an indirect user interface solution for an active walking aid using visual image sensing. The aim of the design is to track the movement of the human feet in order to obtain command signals for driving an active walker to be seen as a robotic rollator. The human gait becomes the input device by which the user controls the actuators of the robotic rollator. Computer vision techniques...
In this paper we propose a gait pattern analysis system that uses stereo vision and machine learning techniques for robotic walker applications. This work contributes with a user monitoring system, that allows the development of more user-centered approaches, such as safer and adaptive HMIs. It also provides a tool to help healthcare personnel in medical assessments. The gait analysis system presented...
This work introduces a wearable system to provide situational awareness for blind and visually impaired people. The system includes a camera, an embedded computer and a haptic device to provide feedback when an obstacle is detected. The system uses techniques from computer vision and motion planning to (1) identify walkable space; (2) plan step-by-step a safe motion trajectory in the space, and (3)...
In recent years, various robots have been researched and developed. As a part of them, robots working in dangerous place for human beings are attracted attention. The dangerous places include the outdoor irregular ground or the narrow place mainly, so the robots need to have high moving ability. In addition, It also requires high operational ability as same as human. To satisfying these necessities,...
In this paper, we developed a small wheel-legged mobile robot system, which could walk on different road environments using wheels or legs. It is composed of mechanical, sensor and control subsystems. The mechanical subsystem includes a wheel-legged mobile platform, a rigid robotic arm and a flexible arm. The mobile platform provides a variety of movement ways to meet the requirement of different...
This paper is focused on control of a six-wheeled robotic platform used for gait pattern recording. Navigation of the platform has to be very precise to keep the path of the platform as narrow as possible and to maintain the distance between the subject and the platform to capture the gait pattern in the most natural way. A key component of the whole robotic platform is an MS Kinect v2 device which...
This paper presents our preliminary work on a depth camera based intent recognition system intended for future use in robotic prosthetic legs. The approach infers the activity mode of the subject for standing, walking, running, stair ascent and stair descent modes only using data from the depth camera. Depth difference images are also used to increase the performance of the approach by discriminating...
Persons with walking frames are often limited with respect to visual acuity and they are depending on assistance. To give them the possibility to move free and autonomous in their environment an intelligent assistance system is proposed which can be mounted on a walking frame is used to observe the scene in walking direction, and obstacles have to be detected. Especially, stairways represent a high...
Assisted gait monitoring could benefit from the measurement of feet position and orientation. These measurements could also be used to implement intention-based control laws for smart walkers. Several works have been dedicated to the detection of lower limbs. The proposed methods are usually fast, but only detect the position of the legs. Others may even be more complete, but are not adapted to reactive...
The paper presents a recovery control method based on visually estimated foot sole floating angle for biped walking robots. By using visual scene recognition through image processing, the floating angle of foot sole can be indirectly estimated, and that means the critical state of falling-down motion is able to be detected without force sensation. According to estimated foot sole floating angle, the...
The paper presents a novel landing foot angle detection for biped walking robot under uneven ground environments. The authors have past proposed a vision-based motion stabilization method with considering landing foot angle. However, since the landing angle is calculated from internal relative angle between both feet, the past method causes accumulated error of the estimation of landing foot angle...
This paper puts forward a novel method based on multilevel information fusion to realize the real-time target detection and tracking. Based on the triangulation technique and least square method, the system matches the moving target by the information on color, and carries out the 3D reconstruction of target. Firstly, when the moving target is detected, the system will scan target human's leg by laser...
In this paper we present a traversability assessment method for motion planning in autonomous walking robots. The aim is to plan the motion of the robot in a real scenario on a rough terrain, where the level of details in the obtained terrain maps is not sufficient for motion planning. A guided RRT (Rapidly-exploring Random Trees) algorithm is used to plan the motion of the robot on rough terrain...
This paper proposes a novel concept for helping the visually impaired know what kind of object there is in an environment. This concept is implemented as a cane system that selects a target object based on a user's demand, recognizes the object from depth data obtained by a Microsoft Kinect sensor, and returns the recognition results via a tactile device. The proposed system is evaluated through a...
Poor sensor data because of uncertainty and hardware limitations results in a robot misinterpreting the state of its surrounding environment, leading to bad decisions and eventually failure to successfully perform its desired tasks. These limitations can be overcome if a teammate robot with a better view shares its visual information. Our work aims to investigate why current approaches fail to effectively...
Localization and modeling of stairways by mobile robots can enable multi-floor exploration for those platforms capable of stair traversal. Existing approaches focus on either stairway detection or traversal, but do not address these problems in the context of path planning for the autonomous exploration of multi-floor buildings. We propose a system for detecting and modeling ascending stairways while...
A vision-based localization system for XY Tracking platform is proposed in this paper. This platform is designed for assisting the humanoid robot to measure the walking performance. When the humanoid robot walks, the platform will keep tracking the robot and localize the position. The proposed system is able to overcome the image block problem, which is caused by the humanoid robot's moving. Two cameras...
This paper proposes a novel assistive system for the visually impaired. The system is composed of a Microsoft Kinect sensor, keypad-type controller, tactile device, laptop computer and so on. The system can recognize three-dimensional objects from depth data generated by the Kinect sensor, and inform visually impaired users not only about the existence of objects, but also about their classes such...
In this work, we present methods that enable a humanoid robot to traverse ramps using only vision and inertial data for sensing. Our video illustrates the method and shows the results obtained with a Nao humanoid. Using the proposed approach, the robot is able to autonomously walk down a 2.10m long ramp at an inclination of 20°.
Set the date range to filter the displayed results. You can set a starting date, ending date or both. You can enter the dates manually or choose them from the calendar.