Smart staff design to assist walking of elders

This paper proposes a smart staff that can vary its length according to height or physical condition of elder, or slope of the ground. In order to find the optimal length of staff, the supporting force is employed as the measure. Initial experiment conducts measurement of the supporting force by using a force sensor embedded at the distal end of the staff. It is found that people with different height have different optimal length of staff. Using the optimal staff, the second part treats the stable walking of staff-assisted elders. It is found that the staff-assisted walking is characterized by five steps. The concept of center of gravity (COG) is used as the measure of the stable walking and a compact wearable sensor system is employed to measure COG of the four steps. Finally, the adjustable staff and COG-based analysis are applied to stable walking in the slope. To measure the slope of the ground, a flexible sensor was installed at the distal end of the staff. Through experiment, the feasibility of the adjustable staff was verified.