A walking assistant using brakes and low cost sensors

Smart Walkers are a category of robotic assistive devices particularly useful for the elderly. These systems help the users in locomotion and with respect to the classical walkers, reduce the risk of fall. This work presents a new system that has been developed using low-cost time of flight laser sensors in place of the more expensive laser scanners. Control of direction is performed by guiding the user by mean of brakes on the rear wheels. Other sensors include an inertial measurement unit with magnetometer and an interface with an external absolute localization system. Preliminary trials have been performed on a graphical and physical simulator implemented in the V-Rep framework.