Patent ID: 8303521

Claim:
A control device for a walking assistance device provided with a lifting force transmitting assembly brought in contact with a body trunk of a user to allow an upward lifting force to act on the body trunk, a pair of right and left foot-mounted assemblies which are attached to feet of legs of the user and which come in contact with a ground in a case where the legs of the user become standing legs, a pair of right and left leg links, each of which has a plurality of joints and which connects the lifting force transmitting assembly and each of the foot-mounted assemblies, and a right leg link actuator and a left leg link actuator which drive at least one joint of the leg links, the control device comprising: a target lifting force setting element configured to set a target value of the lifting force; a device self weight compensation force estimating element configured to estimate a total sum of supporting forces acting on leg links from a floor in reaction to a vertical inertial force actually generated in the walking assistance device due only to a motion of the walking assistance device and gravity acting on the walking assistance device as a device self weight compensation force; a target total lifting force determining element configured to determine a total sum of the target value of the lifting force and the estimated device self weight compensation force as a target total lifting force of the walking assistance device; and an actuator controlling element configured to control driving forces of the right leg link actuator and the left leg link actuator such that the total sum of the supporting forces actually acting from the floor on the leg links of the walking assistance device becomes the target total lifting force.