A turning control of electric wheeled walker device by PSD camera information

Recently, elderly people who cannot walk well often use a wheeled walker with four omnidirectional wheels. However, the wheeled walker causes a fall due to the wheels. To be specific, user falls down when the wheeled walker moves different from user. For example turning, stopping and so on. Then, in order to prevent the accidents, electric wheeled walker device (EWWD) is being researched all over the world. EWWD I proposed can move with same velocity as user´s one. PSD camera on EWWD can detect relative position between PSD camera and LED light on the feet. However proposed EWWD could go only straight. In this paper, turning system of the EWWD is presented. Proposed turning system of EWWD utilizes center of gravity (COG) position of feet. Weighting function which depends on COG position determines the turning angle. Turning system is evaluated by experiments.