Towards Development of an Assistive Device for STS Transfer and Ambulation of Healthy Elderly

Abstract

The life of an individual can be distinguished in 4 major phases, namely infant, adolescence, adult and elderly. With each passing phase, the body accumulates changes which bring forth certain difficulties. But the problems faced by elderly are most severe. Also it has been anticipated by United Nation’s report, that world’s aged population will see a rise of 56 percent in the next 15 years. Hence there is a definite need to address the problems of elderly in the imminent period. One of the most common difficulties faced by any elderly is reduced mobility due to orthopaedic problems and fall syndrome. There are number of solutions available in the literature to improve mobility of an elderly person i.e. by rehabilitation techniques and equipments. While rehabilitation includes conventional as well as contemporary techniques, the report’s primary focus is to discuss the devices being used for STS assistance and ambulation support, and hence proposing a new device which should cover the gaps left unfilled such as natural joint trajectory tracking, portability and simple mechanism. This report covers the entire process of development of the assistive device, which includes four bar mechanism synthesis with an objective to trail the estimated natural hip joint trajectories obtained using Microsoft Kinect Sensor. Subsequently, producing a 1/4th scaled 3D printed prototype of device after performing a set of virtual dynamic simulations in PTC Creo CAD environment.