A Generic Method for the Assessment of Smart Walkers

A systematic review of study results reported for the evaluation of robotic rollators from the perspective of users

“…Eight studies evaluated the physical support [17,18,22,37,39,41,42], four the navigation assistance [25][26][27][28] and four the sensorial assistance functionality of the RR [23,25,28,38]. Six studies included (also) assessment methods that addressed no specific assistance functionality but rather the overall functionality of the RR [16,23,25,28,37,40].…”

“…Study samples differed considerably across studies, covering impaired subjects (e.g. motor, functional, cognitive, visual, and/or neurological) [16][17][18]23,25,26,28,[38][39][40][41], healthy young adults [22,37], healthy and impaired elderly [42], or setting-specific subjects (i.e. residents of retirement facility) [27].…”

“…Seventeen articles described comparative studies or test scenarios in which RRs were compared with conventional AMDs or unassisted walking/STS transfers ('inter-device comparison') [17,18,23,28,37,[40][41][42], or in which different assistance levels (e.g. activated vs. nonactivated navigation assistance) [22,23,25,27,28,38], development stages [18,37] or userinterface designs [26] of the same RR were compared to each other ('intra-device comparison').…”

“…The ability of the RR in supporting users' gait and motor-functional performance was as- [41,42], gait analysis methods [17,42], self-designed walking paths [37], a subjective expert rating of abnormal gait patterns (festinating gait, freezing of gait) [17], or a single dichotomous question on the ease of walking with a RR [40]. The most frequently used outcome of these assessment methods was gait speed or RR velocity [37,41,42].…”

“…The most frequently used outcome of these assessment methods was gait speed or RR velocity [37,41,42].…”