Development of a width-changeable intelligent walking-aid robot

In this paper we develop an intelligent walking-aid robot to assist the elderly and handicapped people. The robot consists of a support frame, a width-adjustable mobile base, and an array of sensors. The robot is designed to be capable of moving in all directions and used in both wide and narrow spaces. In a wide street, the width-adjustable mobile base is controlled to become wider so as to make the robot more stable. During passing through narrow space, the robot can reduce the width of mobile base to adapt the environment. Motion control algorithm of the robot is proposed considering both the user intention and requirements of obstacle avoidance. In addition, we conduct experiments in real environment and the results illustrate the validity of the control algorithm.