Study on a welfare robotic-type exoskeleton system for aged people's transportation.

Michael Gras (1) , Yukio Saito (2) , Kengo Tanaka (2) , Nicolas Chaillet (3)

1 ENSMM - Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et des Microtechniques
2 DIS - Department of Information and Sciences.
3 FEMTO-ST - Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174)

In recent years, the rate of aged people is continuously increasing in Japan: in ten years, around 30% of the Japanese population will be aged more than 65 years old. These people often need some help from caretakers, and this causes a problem for the caretakers: it takes a very big burden for caretakers, for example, to lift people from their bed, when they need to go to toilets. So, a system to help caretakers would be needed: This is a master-slave unit exoskeleton, which helps the caretaker while loading the patient. It is moved by a Hydraulic Bilateral Servo system, whose master cylinders are moved by servo-motors. Presently, the conceptions of the body and hardware are finished. We are developing the servo-loop system and the driving software for the system, and more specially the pulse generation software for the motor of the master part of the exoskeleton. We will be able to discuss about the driving of the entire robotic-type exoskeleton system with a computer, through a PCMCIA interface system.

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Michael Gras, Yukio Saito, Kengo Tanaka, Nicolas Chaillet. Study on a welfare robotic-type exoskeleton system for aged people's transportation.. 7th France-Japon Congress Mecatronics'08 and the 5th Europe-Asia Congress Mecatronics'08., May 2008, Le Grand Bornand, France. 5 p. ⟨hal-00283548⟩