Human Intention Based Fuzzy Variable Admittance Control for a Walking Aid

With the aging of society, walking aids have increasingly attracted attention. Achieving compliant interaction between humans and walking aids plays a crucial role in this context. Accordingly, this paper proposes a novel human intention-based fuzzy variable admittance control strategy. The controller uses human-robot interaction (HRI) force and velocity as fuzzy control inputs, adaptively adjusting the parameters of the admittance model to match different movement phases. By effectively estimating human intention, the controller adjusts the walking aid's speed to synchronize with the user's movements, reducing horizontal interaction forces and operator effort, thereby enhancing the compliance and smoothness of HRI. The controller's effectiveness and its practicality in assisting human ambulation have been validated through experiments.