SIG – Smart Elderly Walker

This project aims to develop the set of technologies to achieve convenient-to-use mobility support for daily use of the elderly. In this project, we are developing a smart elderly walker which is intended to play an active role in an elderly person’s daily life, with three fundamental functionalities that do not exist or not well supported by (smart) walkers in the market: smart walking assistance; falling prevention and support; autonomous mobility. A set of mechanical, control, sensory, and AI technologies is being developed including: (1) novel walker mechanical structure with omnidirectional mobility and outrigger mechanisms; (2) dual-mode actuation and control for walking/standing support and fall prevention/ recovery; (3) multimodal sensory data collection through soft sensory skin, and data processing on device and in the cloud, for event detection and control such as user front following and fall detection; (4) sound-source localization for elderly localisation and auto-navigation of walker.