An improved adaptive controller with parameter optimization by GA for an omni-directional walker

An omni-directional walker (ODW) has been developed for walking rehabilitation for people with walking disabilities. In re habilitation, a user needs to accurately follow the reference path stored in the ODW in order to obtain good training effect. In order to improve the path tracking accuracy, a nonlinear adaptive controller was developed in pervious studies, to deal with load change and center of gravity shift caused by the user. The path tracking accuracy can be improved by adjust the parameter of the adaptive controller. In this paper, genetic algorithm is used to automatically and quickly optimize the parameters of adaptive controller. Simulation was conducted, in which the ODW was controlled to follow a linear path. The results were shown that the parameter optimization strategy is effective to quickly find the optimal parameter.