Smart Walker Robot: From Rollators to ABB Mobility Tech

A smart walker robot takes the walking frame most older people already know and adds motors, sensors and software. The idea is a frame that follows you, brakes on a slope, and warns someone when you fall. This post follows the walker from canes and the first patents to the rollator, then to robotic walkers built in research labs. It covers this autumn's mobility news, the ABB robots and mobile platforms that sit nearest to the problem, and the cost, safety and trust questions that decide whether homes ever get one.

A person using a walking frame beside a hospital bed. Photo: rawpixel.com / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

From canes to the first walking frames

For centuries, people with weak legs leaned on canes and crutches. The walking frame arrived late. William Cribbes Robb of Stretford, in the UK, filed a patent for a walking aid in August 1949, and the first US patent for the idea followed in 1953. Two wheeled variants received US patents in 1957. These frames moved the load from one hand to both arms and gave the user a wider, steadier base than a single stick could offer.

A cane, a forearm crutch and a folding walker side by side. Photo: KDPetersen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In 1965 Elmer F. Ries of Cincinnati, Ohio, patented the first non wheeled design to be called a walker. In 1970 Alfred A. Smith of Van Nuys, California, patented the first walker that looks like the ones in use today. A frame without wheels has to be lifted and set down with each step. That is slow and tiring, and it asks for arm strength that many users do not have. Wheels were the obvious fix, but a rolling frame brings its own problem, since it can run away from a user who loses balance.

A folding walking frame with two front wheels. Photo: High Plains Drifter / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The rollator solved part of that. In 1978 the Swedish inventor Aina Wifalk, who had polio, created the rollator, a wheeled walker with a built in seat and hand brakes. The user can push it along without lifting, brake on demand and sit down when tired. It remains a common model, and any robotic walker will be compared with it. A smart walker has to be easy to use, or people will go back to a plain frame.

A modern four wheel rollator with a seat and hand brakes. Photo: Oksdfjkllrwe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What a robotic walker adds

Researchers have worked on the next step for years. The EU funded i-Walk project, run with the Athena Research Center, built a robotic system on a rollator to give older and motor impaired people mobility and cognitive support. At the University of Hong Kong, a student team led by Zhao Chongyu and supervised by Professor Chuan Wu built a smart walker for indoor use. It follows the user by detecting leg gait, and a pressure sensing soft handle helps it infer what the user intends and predict an emergency.

A four wheel rollator with a basket, the base the i-Walk project built on. Photo: Bestrossi / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The HKU walker also locates the user from their voice using reinforcement learning, so it can drive over when called. It began as a course project and won a Dean's Fund Award, and the project page does not say whether work continues. Recent news points to neighbors in the same field. Coway launched a wearable walking assist robot in early October 2026, a soft robotic suit was reported in late September to help older adults stand up and walk with less effort, and Xinhua wrote on 19 October about technology in China's elderly care. We found no new report on a motorized walker itself.

A Kompai assistive robot, built to help frail people, with older residents. Photo: Kompai / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make walkers, and we found no source linking it to one. The nearest ABB technology is in factories. Flexley Mover AMRs navigate with visual mapping, which is the sensing a self driving walker needs, while the GoFa CRB 15000 cobot shows how a machine can work close to people and stop safely when touched. ABB arms such as the IRB 1300 or IRB 1200 could weld and handle walker frames, so any link is a possibility, not a product. The same fleet planning is first tested in RobotStudio.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

Walkers that follow, steer and call for help

The next models will probably look like a rollator with a small motor and a good brake. Hill assist, a brake that holds on a slope, and an alert after a fall look like the most useful features. A phone link that tells a relative when the user has not moved for hours is a small addition with large value. Steering that gently pulls the user away from an obstacle would add more. A frame that drives to the bed on its own is further off, because it needs reliable indoor navigation through narrow doors, rugs and cluttered rooms.

A rollator designed with a tray and basket. Photo: Gauthier Vandaele / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Related mobility robots show the options. A wheelchair robot arm has to share space with a user and obey safety limits, and an autonomous wheelchair must find routes on its own. A walking exoskeleton takes the opposite route and puts the motors on the body. Each approach tries to give back independence. A walker needs no dressing and can be shared by a household, which a suit cannot. None of them has solved cost or daily reliability yet.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604 moves loads around a plant without fixed tracks. Photo: ABB

A walker that moves by itself can run into a person, so it needs speed limits, bumpers and fail safe brakes, the sort of rules that factory cobots already follow. Batteries must last a day and charge easily. Cost decides whether insurers and families pay. Skills matter too, because a frame that is assembled and tested well takes trained workers and robots. Older people will use a smart walker only if it feels as simple as a cane, and that is a test the research prototypes have yet to pass in real homes, over months, with ordinary users.

An ABB IRB 1300 small industrial robot with an operator holding the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

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