Stair mobility assistive system

Individuals with mobility limitations encounter daily difficulties navigating stairs, often finding existing systems inconvenient for themselves or their assistants. This paper introduces a new assistive system tailored to make stair navigation easier and more convenient for them. The system features a simple and practical design that can be installed on most staircases without major modifications, enabling quick setups to assist people with temporary or permanent mobility limitations. It utilizes a piggyback-style configuration with two prismatic joints that employ PID velocity control, automatically adjusting to different users or chair types, thus reducing the need for prior knowledge of chair or user payloads. The structure allows users to remain in their own wheelchairs or use standard chairs, reducing the need for chair transfers that typically require assistance, thereby indicating the potential to reduce reliance on external helpers. The system’s ease of parameter reconfigurability suggests improved adaptability and practicality, extending its usability to home and healthcare facilities. Performance evaluation results indicate that the system can address key limitations observed in current implementations within the scope of the prototype.