A backpack-like balance assistance device using CMG technology : proof of concept

In 2015, the World Health Organization reported that by 2050 the population of elderly aged 60 and over will increase from 900 million to 20 billion. From this population, 28 to 35% will occur a fall each year which can have severe consequences that can be physical and psychological. Despite the human factor, cares for injured elderly is extremely costly because of the rehabilitation time. It is therefore urgent to find a solution to prevent falls from happening. At the University of Delft in the Nederlands, a team led by Prof. Vallery design a backpack using Control Moment Gyro (CMG) to assist the balancing of the walk. The aim of this master thesis is to produce a down-scaled version of their prototype, an inverted pendulum to model the human body mounted with a single CMG. To do it, the dynamical equations of the system were derived to be implemented in Simulink and design a control law. With the down-scaled parameters obtained, the mechanical design of the inverted pendulum and CMG was conducted to selected the best solution. The latter was dimensioned and drawn on SolidWorks making it ready to be built.