Development and study of the impacts of automated walking aids on the elderly

Abstract

Since Thailand has now completely stepped into an aged society there are more than 20% of the population aged 60 years and over. There was also an increase in those who had problems with their balance. One of the main difficulties for these people is walking on their own. This paper presents an automatic walking aid for people with balance or walking problems. A specially designed automatic walking aid can be adjusted to six levels of height. It has an anti-collision warning system at a distance of up to 40 centimeters and displays GPS coordinates via SMS when falling. The experimental results of the prototype automatic walking aid showed that the walking aid could work as designed and could help people with balance problems walk more comfortably.