Proposal and Technical Validation of a Robotic Cane with Admittance Controller

Currently, robotics has been integrated into many areas of life, with health being one of the main ones, providing practical, novel, and safe solutions that lead people to a better lifestyle. Neurological and musculoskeletal disorders may affect up to 21% of the population at some point in their lives. Additionally, considering the growth of the elderly population in recent years, there is a need to find ways to improve the quality of life of individuals with mobility impairments. This paper presents the proposal and technical validation of a robotic assistance cane, by a preliminary analysis with a single subject and an admittance controller to study the behavior of the robotic cane under controlled conditions. The robotic cane is the result of a collaboration of different research groups from South America and presents has novel mechanical, electronic and programming features for use in the assistance and rehabilitation of people with alterations in lower-limbs weight distribution during gait. The device allows the implementation and validation of different control strategies to find the best one adapted to the user's needs. Experiments were carried out with testing protocol and the participation of a 28 years old male healthy volunteer (height: 1.69m in height, weight: 63kg). The responses obtained by tests using a splint on its lower limb and considering an admittance controller show that the device operates efficiently, and it adequately detects the variables required for a correct operation, as well as managing advanced control algorithms. Future work is expected to propose different advanced control strategies and to verify the efficiency of the cane by testing it on real patients.