Omni Wheel: An Innovative Wheel Design with Lidar Sensing Capability for Increased Safety and Stability of Walkers

Research Objectives: To investigate the effectiveness of an Omni directional wheel and track safety and stability of forward and turning motions on a standard walker. Additional goal was to incorporate a Lidar into the walker to provide warning notification of obstacles in the walker’s path.

Design: The criterion standard chosen for the design of this experiment is comparing the performance of the Omni Wheel to a Standard Wheel on a walker. Data was gathered on both forward motion and turning motion with multiple trials across users. Additional criterion chosen was evaluating the results of Lidar tracking by the walker on various household objects. An Arduino device with embedded sensors was used for data tracking.

Setting: The Setting is the general community.

Participants: Participants were chosen from a volunteer sample. Eight volunteers of ages ranging from 13 to 71 were selected. Eligibility criteria included interest in testing a novel walker. Gait patterns in the chosen participants were normal for the ages of each participant.

Interventions: Interventions: Not applicable

Main Outcome Measures: This experiment was designed to gather data about the use of the Omni Wheel vs. the Standard Wheel for a 10ft forward motion and Left and Right turning motions. Lidar data tracking was planned around 6 household objects and a flights of stairs going up and down..

Results: The Omni Wheel data from the sensor for the forward motion showed lot reduced amplitude changes, clearly showing that the Omni Wheel was a lot smoother to push and move, mirroring the actual experience of the users.

For the turning motions, the Omni Wheel motion showed smooth curves compared to the Straight Wheel. Large fluctuations were seen in the Straight Wheel data indicating the struggle to turn as the user tries to “pull” the walker to the as they turn left or right. This struggle is why users naturally lift the walker to help make turns easier - but leading to more risk of injuries.

Results were consistent across multiple users in 3 different trials.

Lidar obstacle sensing showed clear data as expected, sensing the obstacles as close as 2 ft. away.

Conclusions: The newly developed Omni Wheel has shown significant promise as a means to provide stable and secure navigation for walker users. Since the rotation of the Omni Wheel is about its own axis, users will not need to pick up walkers during turning motions. This could be a potential improvement over current designs in improving safety for walker users.

Author(s) Disclosures: N/A