Development of a self-transfer robotic facility for elderly and disabled

Abstract

In today's world, quality of life is linked with privacy and independence. The elderly and differently abled should not be denied these rights. Creating assistive systems by befriending technology makes a big difference in their lives. This paper addresses the development of a self-transfer facility. The proposed system can be used for transferring a user, with disability in lower limbs, between a wheel chair and a western closet or another chair. A working prototype of a manual self-transfer facility has been developed for proving the concept of operation. The system makes use of the available physical strength of the user for achieving the transfer. The prototype proved the concept of operation of the transfer mechanism by successfully transferring the user, with ease, from a chair to another chair as well as to a western closet.