A Walking Assistive Device of the Ankle Joint Motion and the Control Method According to the Emotion Condition

A walking assistive device which induces only ankle joint motion has been developed. This device is attached on the ankle joint and only assisting the motion of it at the adequate phase, whole leg can be raised spontaneously. It was already sold as a product “RE-Gait
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” for hemiplegic patients walking training. Now the inexpensive version of both leg for the elderly is also developed, which can make users to improve their gait. Furthermore, we propose to control the device taken into account the emotion condition of the user to promote and continue walking. We developed the current emotion evaluation system expressed with two axes; arousal and pleasant, using physiological data. On the other hand, the gait also can be expressed with two axes; cadence and step length. By integrating this system and device, we confirmed the relation between the gait and emotion, and it can assist the users walking effectively.