Development of parallel manipulator sit to stand assistive device for elderly people

Abstract

This paper describes a novel mobility assistive device under development in the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST). The proposed system can help patients who do not have enough physical strength on the lower limbs during sit to stand due to aging, diseases such as polymyositis and myopathy, and joint replacement surgery complications. It can follow the natural pattern of human motion during sit to stand providing assistance force under the shoulder. The overall device is compact and employees a parallel mechanism which provide more stiffness. Several experiments were carried out in a VICON room to calculate the human motion posture while sit to stand motion in addition estimate the trajectory of the end effector during assisting. Computer simulation was built to verify the performance of the proposed system with the reference trajectory.