Soichiro Fujioka

Development of hair-washing robot equipped with scrubbing fingers

We have developed the worlds first hair-washing robot equipped with scrubbing fingers. This robot assists in washing hair in hospitals or care facilities, and it eases the burden of healthcare professionals and care workers while it brings a higher quality of life to patients and others in need of nursing care. It features the mechanical and control technologies needed for touching someone gently on the head. These include, for instance, the self-aligning mechanism and the cylindrical rack mechanism of the robots end effector, the parallel link mechanism of its pressing arm, and the compliance control for providing an appropriate sense of pressure.

The Cleaning Effect of Shampooing Care by Adenosine Triphosphate Bioluminescence System

This paper discusses the cleaning effect of shampooing care by using Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence system. Shampooing care is an important nursing one for patients who are difficult to care oneself. It is necessary to perform effective and comfortable care. So, we need to evaluate these effects quantitatively and qualitatively. We measured ATP, blood pressure, heart rate, heart rate variability, peripheral skin temperature and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) before and after shampooing. When we analyzed ATP adhering to head as “contamination” to evaluate that effect quantitatively, it found that the contamination of the scalp after shampooing decreased by 31%, and that of the hair decreased by 22%. The correlation between ATP and VAS showed that the more ATP decreased, the more subjects felt refresh. The physiological index was stable, and it found that the shampoo method in this study had little load on the body. We were able to clarify the cleaning effect of shampooing using rapid and simple method. These results showed can be the basic data that evaluated the effect by shampooing comprehensively.

Development of head care robot using five-bar closed link mechanism with enhanced head shape following capability

We have developed a head care robot equipped with scrubbing fingers that washes hair and provides scalp cares in hospitals and care facilities to ease the burden on healthcare professionals and care workers. Our robot provides frequent hair washing and a higher Quality Of Life (QOL) to patients and others who need such nursing care. Its elemental technologies include the following: a cylindrical rack mechanism for self-aligning and a drive-force transmission from an electric motor to multiple fingers, a five-bar closed link mechanism to expand the area of the head that can be washed by extension motion, and rear pressure force control by a coordinated double arm motion to switch between supporting and washing the head. In addition, we introduce an orientation correction mechanism into our five-bar closed link mechanism to keep the end effectors contact face aligned along the heads surface. This paper presents several elemental technologies and the kinematics of a five-bar closed link mechanism and discusses the improvement of the head shape following capability using an orientation correction mechanism.

Biosignal-based relaxation evaluation of head-care robot

Such popular head care procedures as shampooing and scalp massages provide physical and mental relaxation. However, they place a big burden such as chapped hands on beauticians and other practitioners. Based on our robot hand technology, we have been developing a head care robot. In this paper, we quantitatively evaluated its relaxation effect using the following biosignals: accelerated plethymography (SDNN, HF/TP, LF/HF), heart rate (HR), blood pressure, salivary amylase (sAA) and peripheral skin temperature (PST). We compared the relaxation of our developed head care robot with the head care provided by nurses. In our experimental result with 54 subjects, the activity of the autonomic nerve system changed before and after head care procedures performed by both a human nurse and our proposed robot. Especially, in the proposed robot, we confirmed significant differences with the procedure performed by our proposed head care robot in five indexes: HF/TP, LF/HF, HR, sAA, and PST. The activity of the sympathetic nerve system decreased, because the values of its indexes significantly decreased: LF/HF, HR, and sAA. On the other hand, the activity of the parasympathetic nerve system increased, because of the increase of its indexes value: HF/TP and PST. Our developed head care robot provided satisfactory relaxation in just five minutes of use.