Elderly Care Training using Real-Time Monitoring System with Care Training Assistant Elbow Robot (CaTARo-E)

Abstract

The development of elderly robotic simulators for care training is significantly important as the proportion of elderly people continues to increase in the world. Caregivers or therapists, especially the novices, need to be trained in care training skill. The best methodology is to make use of the elderly person for accumulating skill for care training, but there are some difficulties such as recruitment of subjects and the fatigue experienced by them in repeated experiments. To improve the care training effectiveness, we developed the real-time monitoring system using elderly elbow joint robot of a part of the whole body for care training. We first have developed a training program that allows novices to perform care training on a real-time based on the result (guideline graph) of expert's range of motion (ROM) exercise. In addition, we performed ROM exercise for expert and novices with this system by obtaining quantitative data such angle, torque, and pressure value, and it was found that there was a difference between the two groups.