Yoshihito Kagawa

Robot therapy as for recreation for elderly people with dementia - Game recreation using a pet-type robot -

Most elderly people staying in nursing homes have considerable dementia, and various kinds of recreation program have hence been executed in order to improve or prevent this problem. However the effect of recreation has not been proved quantitatively. In this paper, we show the relationship between actions of elderly people with considerable dementia during recreation and abilities of memorization, emotion control, accommodation to society, etc., and decompose their actions into basic action factors. We propose a design method for recreation programs composed of effective factor actions for improving dementia. We analyze the effect of recreation in an experiment of robot therapy recreation based on the proposed method.

Picking up of robot's motion based activity data of elderly people through sensor information for RAA

Robot assisted therapy/activity (RAT/A) has been recognized as one of effective method for elderly or senile dementia persons to accelerate the physical and mental rehabilitation. One of issues of current RAA is how the robot act in RAA. The method to select an animal-type robots motion during RAA was focused in this paper. On the assumption that subjects would take almost same behavior to an animal-type robot, the subjects reactions to a robots motion were described into two-dimensional map. Then, robots motions were picked up by inverse analysis of the map. The method to select the robots motion was exemplified by experiments (RAA) at a care facility

Effective Method of Robot Therapy in a Nursing Home -Study on Intervention of Therapy

Robot therapy using a pet-type robot is useful for the welfare and care of elderly people. In this paper, we have described an effective intervention method of robot therapy, which was obtained experimentally through conducting robot therapy in a nursing home

Comparison of the Reaction Time Measurement System for Evaluating Robot Assisted Activities

RAA (Robot Assisted Activities) allow people to feel joy and pleasure and recover through contact with a robot. Considerable research has reported that RAA is useful for elderly persons, children hospitalized in pediatric wards and so on. However no specific evaluation method concerning RAA has yet been established. In this paper, we propose a reaction time measurement system for evaluating RAA. The level of caution or concentration of a subject can be estimated in terms of the reaction time based on visual or acoustic stimuli. We try to evaluate RAA using the variance in the reaction time before and after RAA respectively. We have developed a reaction time measurement system with hardware, following which we compared several reaction time measurement systems concerning performance and operability. We reported the results of comparisons featuring such measurement systems and the basic results of the RAA evaluation experiment using reaction time measurement. The results suggested that selection of the optimal enforcement form in RAA has been enabled through application of this reaction time measurement system.

Physical activity rehabilitation trials with humanoid robot

Physical activity is recognized as effective for rehabilitation from dementia and more effective if combined with cognitive activity. In this study, two kinds of rehabilitation attempts using a humanoid robot that moved like a human body were made to help the physical activities of elderly people. In one attempt, the robot communicated by gesture and voice with the people and gave questions and hints for them to move as designated. In the other attempt, the robot, as a trainer, instructed multiple elderly persons to perform exercises.

Study on Transition of Elderly People's Reactions in Robot Therapy

Most elderly people staying in nursing homes have dementia, and various kinds of recreational programs are provided in order to prevent or ameliorate this problem. Robot therapy is a recreational program that has recently been introduced in some nursing homes. However, the effects of robot therapy are difficult to evaluate. In this study, we identified events occurring during therapy that are important in the proliferation and evolution of robot therapy. We also found that the presence of an intervener encourages elderly people to be more active.

Examination of RAA-oriented Boarding-type Walking Robot

This paper presents an RAA-oriented boarding-type walking robot that can walk outdoors. The user straddles the robot similar to when horse riding. The same physical and mental effect as that experienced when horse riding can be expected. The robot is constructed using a Chebyshev link mechanism. The Chebyshev link converts the circular motion of the actuator into a straight-line movement. The robots dimensions are: length=896 mm, width=440 mm, and height=1285 mm