INS/EKF-based stride length, height and direction intent detection for walking assistance robots

Abstract

We propose an algorithm used to obtain the information on stride length, height difference, and direction based on user's intent during walking. For exoskeleton robots used to assist paraplegic patients' walking, this information is used to generate gait patterns by themselves in on-line. To obtain this information, we attach an inertial measurement unit(IMU) on crutches and apply an extended kalman filter-based error correction method to reduce the phenomena of drift due to bias of the IMU. The proposed method is verifed in real walking scenarios including walking, climbing up-stairs, and changing direction of walking with normal.