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Home Oxygen Therapy is a medical treatment for patients suffering from severe lung diseases. High purity oxygen is usually supplied to the nose via cannula (air tube), and it can give patients a high quality of life outside of hospital. However, whenever patients go out they must carry portable oxygen equipment which typically weighs about 4kg. In order to support H.O.T. patients, we have proposed a mobile following robot to carry the heavy oxygen equipment, consisting of two active differential drive wheels and two passive wheels connected by two parallel linkage mechanisms so as to form a rocker-bogie mechanism to negotiate a step or bump sideways. A tether interface is introduced to achieve robust measurement of the relative position of the user with respect to the robot. In this paper, we evaluate the size of the robot taken on public transportation. Moreover, an initial evaluation of the robot by Home Oxygen Therapy patient on a public road is reported, suggesting effectiveness in reducing the physical burden of the patient.

Home oxygen therapy (HOT) is a medical treatment for patients suffering from severe lung diseases. Although walking outdoors is recommended for patients to maintain physical strength, patients always have to carry a portable oxygen supplier which is not sufficiently light weight for this purpose. Our ultimate goal is to develop a mobile robot to carry an oxygen tank and follow a patient in an urban outdoor environment. We have proposed a mobile robot with a tether interface to detect the relative position of the foregoing patient. In this paper, we improve mobile platform mechanisms and active wheels to maximize the step height which can be negotiated, and to allocate sufficient space in the main body to carry an actual oxygen tank. The following control algorithm is also improved and its effectiveness is demonstrated in an outdoor experiment.

Home Oxygen Therapy (H.O.T.) is a medical treatment for severe lung diseases in which the patients are supplied concentrated oxygen. This paper investigates the use of a follower robot as a support device for H.O.T. patients, consisting of a two-wheeled differential drive robot connected to the user by tether. Two different control algorithms were studied using dynamic simulation and motion capture experiments with healthy subjects. In further experiments with H.O.T. patients, including a questionnaire survey, it was confirmed that Follow the Leader control was capable of following the user’s trajectory more accurately than Pseudo-Joystick control, and that overall H.O.T. patients showed a preference for Follow the Leader control.