Current Status and Consideration of Support/Care Robots for Stand-Up Motion

Abstract

In order to make robots, which are expected to play an active role in the medical and nursing care fields in the future, more practical for use in rehabilitation, it is necessary to evaluate the current status of the design of these robots. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the existing literature on standing motion assistance robots developed and reported to date and investigate each existing design technique from the perspectives of “Functions and Effects” and “Assist form and control.” Then, we search and investigate papers written in English on standing motion assistance robots reported from 2008 to 2019 and organize the contents of the relevant papers into their different assistance modes and four categories related to design. As a result, the standing motion assistance robots are classified into three assist modes: partial assistance, total assistance, and both. The assistance forms are roughly divided into two types: a wearable type and a non-wearable type. It is also demonstrated that both the assistance forms adopt the same trends in terms of the control strategy design and system I/O relationships. On the other hand, power equipment tends to be different between the two forms.