About the Team
FREE Bionics Japan participated in the Global Innovation Challenge 2024 Living Assistance Robot Contest.
This is the second time for FREE Bionics Japan to participate in this contest, having first participated in GIC2021.
FREE Bionics Japan is a subsidiary of FREE Bionics based in Taiwan.
FREE Bionics researches and develops walking assistive robots. The team is dedicated to finding solutions for people with disabilities every day. All employees are committed to the development of technology without forgetting their original intentions, and are evolving every day to lead the world's welfare, inheriting the spirit of the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a Taiwanese government agency (equivalent to AIST in Japan), from Taiwan to the world.
The robot used in this project, FREE Walk, weighs approximately 20 kg and can walk at a maximum speed of 2 km/h. It has motors in its hip and knee joints. It has motors in its hip and knee joints, enabling it to stand, sit, and walk.
The robot can be controlled in four ways: by the user himself, by a cane, by a controller attached to the walker, by an advanced algorithm that detects the user's willingness to move and his body posture, and by the robot's response. This time, for the first time at the Tsukuba City venue, the robot was challenged to walk on the steps of an entrance hallway.
The pilot is Kohei Matsubara.
In 2014, he suffered a 12th thoracic spinal cord injury in a car accident and is now confined to a car chair.
He has participated in GIC2021 and challenged Task 1, 4, and 6 in the previous challenge. This time, he challenged Tasks 1 through 6 by himself.