Development of the Gate Diagnosis Method and the Gait Assist Cane to Prevent Fall of Elderly People

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26420197
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Intelligent mechanics/Mechanical systems
• Research Institution: Shizuoka University
• Principal Investigator: ITO Tomotaka 静岡大学, 工学部, 准教授 (00283341)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): TANI Shigeki 浜松医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (80217116) ; SUZUKI Mizue 浜松医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (40283361)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 転倒予防 / 高齢者 / 歩行診断 / 杖 / ロボット / 計測 / 福祉機器

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Recently, the population ratio of elderly people is increasing rapidly and so, to improve the QOL of elderly people is a today’s important social issue. Most urgent problem is how to prevent the gradual decrease of the walking ability and how to prevent the elderly people’s fall. In this research, we aimed to develop (a) a gait measurement and diagnosis system and (b) a robotic gait-assist cane for preventing fall. The developed gait measurement and diagnosis system can be applied for the clinical gait analysis by analyzing the gait feature values and by detecting the gait type of each person. We conducted the gait measurement experiments for 72 elderly persons by using the proposed system. We also developed a new multi-legs gait assist cane which can improve the stability of the walk on the uneven terrain by using robot technologies. In this study, we obtained important knowledge about the prevention of falls.

Free Research Field

ロボット工学