3 things to know about Murata’s self-balancing walker

3 things to know about Murata’s self-balancing walker

New technology is creating a lot of buzz after recent demonstration at CREATEC conference

BY JEFFREY BAUSCH

The purpose of Murata Manufacturing’s new self-balancing walker is to serve as a walking aid for senior citizens and persons with limited mobility. It can also assist those with bulky luggage, like groceries, baby carriages, and shopping carts.

The simplicity of its design, coupled with some clever technology, has many talking about it being an important step forward in the field of mobility-assistance technology.

(Credit: trendhunter.com)

Here are three quick things you need to know about it:

We’ve actually seen this technology before

The technology behind the “Electric Walking Aid,” as it’s being called, is similar to the manufacturer’s promotional robots, Murata Seisaku-kun and Murata Seiko-chan, which helps prevent them from falling over.

(Credit: techon.nikkeibp.co.jp)

The walking aid has built-in gyro sensors to detect how much the user’s body is tilted.

(Credit: trendhunter.com)

Also, its tires rely upon an inverted pendulum principle in order to help keep its balance.

(Credit: trendhunter.com)

It can judge — and adjust — its speed

In addition to helping prevent falls, it also has built-in power assistance capabilities. That’s right, the walker requires practically no effort to push. This is great news because it means actually using it won’t tire out the target demo, that being senior citizens and persons with limited mobility (no, not the super-lazy).

It can judge how fast or slow it should move in order to keep pace with the user, making it a whole lot easier for them to get from point A to point B on their own two feet.

It’s not available yet (collective sigh )

The walking aid you see in the pictures above is just a prototype. Murata hasn’t released any sort of timeline on when an actual model will be released. Right now the company is performing a bunch of public demonstrations to see how much interest there is and to also gather some feedback on what else it can be used for.

The aforementioned simplicity of this technology does suggest that this product might have a bright future. This is particularly true when we consider users’ alternatives being higher-tech walkers and exoskeletons, the complexity of which can be a bit of a turn-off for a majority of the general demo.