Gaits and geometry of a walking chair for the disabled

The development of a walking chair is very important to a person with disability. This paper studies some fundamental issues of a practical walking chair, which are performance requirements, gaits and body geometry. According to the needs of a disabled person, the performance requirements of a walking chair are specified. The number of legs and leg mechanism are determined according to previous design experience. The three basic gaits for a quadruped to negotiate both structured and unstructured terrain, namely straight-line gaits, turning gaits and stair-climbing gaits, are then studied. Based on the results of gait study, the geometry of the walking chair is designed. Two geometric models are proposed and their performance is evaluated.