Walking Assist Design of a Dual-arm Robot

In this paper, a dual-arm mobile robot is designed and experimented to provide walking support to a user. The robot has two operation modes, which can be transformed according to the user's need. When the robot is in the grasping mode, the robot can fetch an object using computer vision and 6-DOF robot arms. When the user wants walking help, the robot can be configured to the supporting mode to provide walking assist. In the supporting mode, the robot arms are transformed to close and hold each other by the special designed buckle mechanism. A motion planning strategy is proposed to achieve arm-closing and buckle locking and unlocking. In this way, the robot arms are configured into a handrail for user support. Furthermore, a 6-DOF force/torque sensor is installed on the right robot arm to estimate the user's motion intent. The walking support system determines robot velocity based on a compliance controller to provide the walking assist. Several experiments validate the proposed design and demonstrate the dual-arm robot can provide user walking assist.