In-Home Overhead Mobility System for Adaptable House

The Adaptable Housing Project seeks to answer problems of well-being and movement in the home of aging and physically challenged people. Their solution is twofold: create a holistic physical environment adaptable to each individual’s special needs and unique challenges as they evolve over time - for living life at maximum freedom - and design all the components of that space to be beautiful and life-affirming. An important part of the design of the house is a mobility system that avoids the limitations of traditional wheelchair and walkers by using an overhead gantry and track system to assist the user with three different levels of support: --Independent, where the user is able to support their own body weight and walk on their own and the system can come when called, follow them around or provide slight resistance to support physical conditioning, and catch them if they fall. -- Intermediate, where the system takes a substantial portion of the body weight but still allows the user to walk. -- Fully supportive, where the user would sit in a sling or similar device and the system would lift them, carry them where they wanted to go, and lower them back down. For this project, the student team worked to provide adaptable levels of actuated mobility assistance to a house being designed for people with fluctuating mobility capabilities, so that the people utilizing the house were inspired to access most of the living spaces without a wheelchair or walker. In particular, this student team worked to focus on the overhead support structures and actuation methods; they worked to develop and analyze various options and worked to develop and test a scaled prototype. In all modes, the system the student team worked to create was to cover a ~20x40 ft room, and be able to transfer the user to another track system in adjacent rooms. This project was one of 4 working on the Adaptable House mobility system. The students on this project worked to focus on the track and actuation aspects, such as the sizing and type of track and structure, and the architecture and sizing of the controls for all 3 axes. They worked to collaborate with students on the other projects focused on the harness and support interface, and motion control (planar sway control, and lifting impedance control).

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