A Standing Support Mobility Robot for Enhancing Independence in Elderly Daily Living

-- This paper presents a standing support mobility robot "Moby" developed to enhance independence and safety for elderly individuals during daily activities such as toilet transfers. Unlike conventional seated mobility aids, the robot maintains users in an upright posture, reducing physical strain, supporting natural social interaction at eye level, and fostering a greater sense of self-efficacy. Moby offers a novel alternative by functioning both passively and with mobility support, enabling users to perform daily tasks more independently. Its main advantages include ease of use, lightweight design, comfort, versatility, and effective sit-to-stand assistance. A custom control system enables safe and intuitive interaction, while the integration with NA V2 and LiDAR allows for robust navigation capabilities. This paper reviews existing mobility solutions and compares them to Moby, details the robot's design, and presents objective and subjective experimental results using the NASA-TLX method and time comparisons to other methods to validate our design criteria and demonstrate the advantages of our contribution. I. INTRODUCTION As global life expectancy continues to rise, societies around the world are confronting the challenge of supporting an aging population with limited caregiving resources [1]. This issue is particularly pronounced in countries like Japan, where nearly one in three individuals will be aged 65 or older by year 2036 [2], [3].