Autonomous following method of intelligent assistance walking robot based on large-scale piezoresistive films

Autonomous following is one of the critical issues in assistance walking robotics. In particular, it is a promising solution to help elders in everyday life. In this paper, we propose a method that combines large-scale piezoresistive films, wireless communication techniques, intelligent assistance walking robots and pressure image recognition to identify, track and follow the target person in dynamic environments. First, pressure image data acquisition devices are developed to obtain the object pressure distribution by measuring the voltage changes caused by the applied pressure on the piezoresistive films. Subsequently, host computer is developed to receive the pressure distribution image data from the designed signal acquisition devices through the serial port, and a statistical-based pressure distribution image recognition method is proposed to distinguish between robot and target person and to obtain the positions of robot and target person. Eventually, the host computer sends a command to assistance the walking robotics control system by wireless communication devices to achieve dynamic track and follow the target person. To validate the performance of the proposed method, a series of person following experiments are carried out. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm effectively follows the target person.