Design, Analysis & Prototyping of a Semi-Automated Staircase-Climbing Rehabilitation Robot
This addresses mobility challenges for people with disabilities, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing rehabilitation robotics.
The paper tackles the problem of enabling individuals with physical disabilities to navigate staircases by designing SKALA, a large-sized robot that functions as a non-conventional wheelchair, resulting in a system with unique mechanical design and embedded control architecture for teleoperation and autonomous operation.
In this paper, we describe the mechanical design, system overview, integration and control techniques associated with SKALA, a unique large-sized robot for carrying a person with physical disabilities, up and down staircases. As a regular wheelchair is unable to perform such a maneuver, the system functions as a non-conventional wheelchair with several intelligent features. We describe the unique mechanical design and the design choices associated with it. We showcase the embedded control architecture that allows for several different modes of teleoperation, all of which have been described in detail. We further investigate the architecture associated with the autonomous operation of the system.