Standing Support Robot for Recovery of Lower Limb Function and Evaluation of Caregiver's Burden by Measuring Biological Signals.

There is a serious caregiver shortage in Japan as a result of the country’s aging population and the corresponding rise in nursing care demand. Therefore, the most basic human activity, standing up, needs a robot that can teach the disabled person to stand up while relieving the burden on caregivers. In recent years, standing support robots have been developed for practical use to reduce the burden of caregivers and to support rehabilitation toward independence. However, there are issues such as the lack of motor learning for persons requiring nursing care that enables them to reacquire standing movements due to their center of gravity and posture that differ from normal standing movements, and the inability to apply the robot to persons requiring nursing care who have difficulty with standing movements. In this study, we developed a standing support robot that supports lifting of the trunk, which reduce a large burden of caregiving. Meanwhile enabling motor learning for those who require care. Specifically, the robot supports only the guidance of postural changes in the lower limbs without lifting the care receiver, thus the care receiver’s weight is supported by himself/herself. Finally, we verified the load on the care receiver plantar foot in an experiment in which an able-bodied person simulated assisting a care receiver in standing up motion and confirmed that the caregiver’s workload was reduced, which demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposal.