"I want to walk": The Unyielding Dream of Approximately 40,000 Children with Walking Difficulties

Our company endorses April Dream, an initiative to make April 1st a day for announcing dreams. This press release represents the dream of "AssistMotion Inc."

AssistMotion Inc. (Headquarters: Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture; Representative: Minoru Hashimoto) researches, develops, manufactures, and sells "curara," a walking assist robot designed to support individuals with walking disabilities.

Background of the Dream Approximately 40,000 children in Japan face difficulties walking on their own. Despite their desire to walk, assistive devices tailored to children's body types and growth are not widely available, and walking practice using these devices is currently limited to hospitals and facilities. As a result, children have limited opportunities to experience "moving by their own will" during their early years. Therefore, we aim to provide children with the successful experience of "being able to move by themselves" by developing a pediatric walking assist robot that can be used daily at home.

Our Efforts to Date The walking assist robot "curara" has evolved based on fundamental research at Shinshu University's Faculty of Textile Science, with the concept of "wearable robotic wear" that is as light and easy to put on and take off as clothing. Since the production of Prototype No. 0 in 2008, after more than 10 years of research and development, the adult walking assist robot was released in 2021. The initial body weight of 13kg has been lightweighted to 2.9kg through continuous improvements. Furthermore, it is designed for daily use, with features such as being able to be worn by simply fastening five belts and intuitive operation via a smartphone.

However, the path to this point has been far from smooth. We have faced numerous technical challenges, including balancing ease of wearing with safety, lightweighting with assistive power, and adapting to diverse individual body types. Through repeated prototyping and improvements, the accumulation of overcoming each challenge has led to the current "curara." A major feature is our aim to create a robot that can be "worn" like clothing, using soft materials as much as possible. In this process, we have also established control technology and structural design technology that softly assist the movement of each joint without using link mechanisms like general robots.

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