Paper:
Frailty Care Robot for Elderly and its Application for Physical and Psychological Support
Yoichi Yamazaki*1,, Masayuki Ishii*2, Takahiro Ito*3, and Takuya Hashimoto*4
*1Department of Home Electronics, Faculty of Creative Engineering, Kanagawa Institute of Technology
1030 Shomo-Ogino, Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0292, Japan
*2OKUBO GEAR Co., Ltd.
3030 Kamiechi, Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0801, Japan
*3CMK Products Corporation
1-1-11 Tanashioda, Chuo, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 252-0245, Japan
*4Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tokyo University of Science
6-3-1 Niijuku, Katsushika, Tokyo 125-8585, Japan
Corresponding author
To achieve continuous frail care in the daily lives of the elderly, we propose AHOBO, a frail care robot for the elderly at home. Two types of support systems by AHOBO were implemented to support the elderly in both physical health and psychological aspects. For physical health frailty care, we focused on blood pressure and developed a support system for blood pressure measurement with AHOBO. For psychological frailty care, we implemented reminiscent coloring with the AHOBO as a recreational activity with the robot. The usability of the system was evaluated based on the assumption of continuous use in daily life. For the support system in blood pressure measurement, we performed a qualitative evaluation using a questionnaire for 16 subjects, including elderly people under blood pressure measurement by the system. The results confirmed that the proposed robot does not affect the blood pressure readings and is acceptable in terms of ease of use based on subjective evaluation. For the reminiscent coloring interaction, subjective evaluation was conducted on two elderly people under the verbal fluency task, and it has been confirmed that the interaction can be used continuously in daily life. The widespread use of the proposed robot as an interface for AI that supports daily life will lead to a society in which AI robots support people from the cradle to the grave.
- [1] R. J. Gobbens, M. A. van Assen, K. G. Luijkx, and J. M. Schols, “Testing an integral conceptual model of frailty,” J. Adv. Nurs., Vol.68, No.9, pp. 2047-2060, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05896.x, 2012.
- [2] The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) in Japan, “Vital Statistics of Japan,” 2015.
- [3] M. Schoone, E. Dusseldorp, M. E. van den Akker-van Marle, A. J. Doornebosch, R. Bal, A. Meems, M. P. Oderwald, and R. van Balen, “Stroke Rehabilitation in Frail Elderly with the Robotic Training Device ACRE: A Randomized Controlled Trial and Cost-Effectiveness Study,” J. of Robotics, Vol.2011, Article ID 543060, doi: 10.1155/2011/543060, 2011.
- [4] C. D. Kidd and C. Breazeal, “Robots at home: Understanding long-term human-robot interaction,” 2008 IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 3230-3235, doi: 10.1109/IROS.2008.4651113, 2008.
- [5] Mabu Experience – Catalia Health, http://www.cataliahealth.com/platform-ai/mabu-experience/ [accessed July 15, 2020]
- [6] J. Woo, K. Wada, and N. Kubota, “Robot Partner System for elderly people care by using sensor network,” 2012 4th IEEE RAS & EMBS Int. Conf. on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), pp. 1329-1334, doi: 10.1109/BioRob.2012.6290933, 2012.
- [7] K. Ogawa, S. Nishio, K. Koda, G. Balistreri, T. Watanabe, and H. Ishiguro, “Exploring the Natural Reaction of Young and Aged Person with Telenoid in a Real World,” J. Adv. Comput. Intell. Intell. Inform., Vol.15, No.5, pp. 592-597, doi: 10.20965/jaciii.2011.p0592, 2011.
- [8] K. Takeuchi, Y. Yamazaki, and K. Yoshifuji, “Avatar Work: Telework for Disabled People Unable to Go Outside by Using Avatar Robots,” Companion of the 2020 ACM/IEEE Int. Conf. on Human–Robot Interaction (HRI ’20), pp. 53-60, doi: 10.1145/3371382.3380737, 2020.
- [9] K. Wada, T. Shibata, T. Saito, and K. Tanie, “Psychological and Social Effects of Robot-assisted Activity in the Elderly Robot-assisted at Health Service Facilities,” J. Adv. Comput. Intell. Intell. Inform., Vol.7, No.2, pp. 130-138, doi: 10.20965/jaciii.2003.p0130, 2003.
- [10] K. Wada and T. Shibata, “Social Effects of Robot Therapy in a Care House – Change of Social Network of the Residents for One Year –,” J. Adv. Comput. Intell. Intell. Inform., Vol.13, No.4, pp. 386-392, doi: 10.20965/jaciii.2009.p0386, 2009.
- [11] T. Kobayashi, K. Arai, T. Imai, K. Kuriyama, S. Ichimaru, and T. Watanabe, “Stroke Signs Detection System by SNS Agency Robot,” 2020 IEEE Int. Conf. on Consumer Electronics (ICCE), doi: 10.1109/ICCE46568.2020.9042995, 2020.
- [12] S. Ono, J. Woo, Y. Matsuo, J. Kusaka, K. Wada, and N. Kubota, “A Health Promotion Support System for Increasing Motivation Using a Robot Partner, Transactions of the Institute of Systems,” Trans. of the Institute of Systems, Control and Information Engineers, Vol.28, Issue 4, pp. 161-171, 2015 (in Japanese with English abstract).
- [13] Y. Yamazaki, M. Ishii, and T. Ito, “AHOBO: Frailty Care Robot for Elderly and its Application for Blood Pressure Measurement,” Proc. of the 9th Int. Symp. on Computational Intelligence and Industrial Applications (ISCIIA2020), Session No.2A1-1-2, 2020.
- [14] K. Yano, “Suggestions for a Community Care Nursing Activity Program Supporting Self Care for Monitaring High Blood Pressure,” Kawasaki Medical Welfare J., Vol.15, No.1, pp. 295-302, 2005 (in Japanese).
- [15] M. Tagi, Y. Tamaki, T. Morikawa, M. Matsuhisa, and H. Moriguchi, “The Behavior Modification to the Lifestyle by Healthy Condition Visualization which Utilized NFC Communication Pedometer,” Japan J. of Medical Informatics, Vol.34, No.6, pp. 281-291, 2014 (in Japanese with English abstract).
- [16] Y. Yamazaki, F. Dong, Y. Uehara, Y. Hatakeyama, H. Nobuhara, Y. Takama, and K. Hirota, “Mentality Expression in Affinity Pleasure-Arousal Space using Ocular and Eyelid Motion of Eye Robot,” Joint 3rd Int. Conf. on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems and 7th Int. Symp. on Advanced Intelligent Systems (SCIS&ISIS 2006), Session ID TH-H3-1, pp. 422-425, 2006.
- [17] Y. Yamazaki, H. A. Vu, Q. P. Le, K. Fukuda, Y. Matsuura, M. S. Hannachi, F. Dong, Y. Takama, and K. Hirota, “Mascot robot system by integrating eye robot and speech recognition using RT middleware and its casual information recommendation,” Proc. 3rd Int. Symp. on Computational Intelligence and Industrial Applications (ISCIIA2008), pp. 375-384, 2008.
- [18] Y. Tang, H. A. Vu, P. Q. Le, D. Masano, O. Thet, C. Fatichah, Z. Liu, M. Yamaguchi, M. L. Tangel, F. Dong, Y. Yamazaki, and K. Hirota, “Multimodal Gesture Recognition for Mascot Robot System Based on Choquet Integral Using Camera and 3D Accelerometers Fusion,” J. Adv. Comput. Intell. Intell. Inform., Vol.15, No.5, pp. 563-572, doi: 10.20965/jaciii.2011.p0563, 2011.
- [19] Y. Yamazaki, S. Hirata, and M. Isshiki, “Active Transactive Memory by Communication Robot and Dispelling Loneliness of Elderly,” Proc. of the 5th Int. Workshop on Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics (IWACIII2017), Session No.OS-3-3, 2017.
- [20] R. Nouchi, Y. Taki, H. Takeuchi et al., “Brain Training Game Improves Executive Functions and Processing Speed in the Elderly: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” PLOS ONE, Vol.7, Issue 1, e29676, 2012.
- [21] Y. Yamazaki, Y. Yoshida, M. Motoki, et al., “Mentality Expressive Motion based on Pleasure-arousal Plane for An Antenna Hair-Type Object for Generating Empathy,” Proc. of the 5th Int. Conf. on the Advanced Mechatronics (ICAM2010), pp. 641-646 (2C3-2), doi: 10.1299/jsmeicam.2010.5.641, 2010.
- [22] “The Japanese Society of Hypertension Guidelines for the Management of Hypertension (JSH 2014),” Hypertens Res., Vol.37, pp. 253-392, 2014.
- [23] H. Tanaka, D. Haga, S. Takahata, et al., “An Effect of “Reminiscent Coloring,” for Cognitive Function, Mental Function and Daily life in Mild Dementia Patients,” J. of Rehabilitation and Health Sciences, Vol.7, pp. 39-42, 2009 (in Japanese).
- [24] “PaintEmotion,” https://kengolab.net/app/yumeiro/ (in Japanese) [accessed July 15, 2020]
This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationa License.