A new silver robot platform for the elderly and the handicapped: Spiderbot^TM-posture balancing and muscle strengthening exercises

Abstract

By using a new type of silver robot called SpiderBot^TM, posture balancing and muscle strengthening exercises were presented. Unlike mobile robots on a floor, SpiderBot^TM is conceptualized to generate full mobility in a room and to have higher payload while generating six degrees-of-freedom for assisting daily lives of the elderly and the handicapped. A preliminary prototype of SpiderBot^TM has been constructed by using incompletely restrained wire mechanism and simple control algorithms were implemented for two types of exercises for elderly people's health improvement. One is a posture balancing exercise that prevents from falling to any directions. And the other is muscle strengthening exercise that uses the SpiderBot^TM as a weight lifting mechanism. Preliminary experimental results show that the proposed new silver robot platform is used for such exercises.