• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.447-456
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• 1997

When the disabled is operating a rehabilitation assisting system with a joystick by himself, unlike in the case of a normal person, tremor with joystick control or instant miscontrol can often occur. If these misoperations should be directly relayed to the system, shaking or malfunction of the mobile rehabilitation assisting system might be the result. The safety of the disabled is of prime concern. To solve this problem, that is, to prevent the miscontrol of the disabled operator and avoid crashes into his or her surroundings, we propose the force-reflection locomotion algorithm with the joystick. This method uses ultrasonic sensors to measure the distance between the object and mobile robot. Based on the reception of sensory data, the necessary torque is applied via the joystick to the attatched motor. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method, the subjects on the reflected force by the dynamic characteristics of the joystick and the reflected force by the distance information are tested Even though there are some differences in human dexterity, we confirmed the fact that the information from the obstacles was relayed to the operator via the joystick and resulted in an improved operational performance and safety level with regard to those obstacles.