SmartWalker: Towards an Intelligent Robotic Walker for the Elderly

This paper presents SmartWalker and evaluates the appropriateness and usefulness of the walker and its gesture-based interface for the elderly. As a high-tech extension of a regular walker, the SmartWalker aims to assist its user intelligently and navigate around its environment autonomously. Equipped with sensors and actuators, the prototype accepts gesture commands and navigates around accordingly. The gesture-based interface uses a k-nearest neighbours classifier with dynamic time warping to recognize gestures and the Viola and Jones face detector to locate the user. We evaluated the walker with 23 residents and eight staff members at five different retirement homes in Zurich. The elderly found the SmartWalker useful and exciting, but few were willing to replace their walkers by robotic walkers. Their reluctance may stem from the walker´s size and weight and their unfamiliarity with technology.