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.
We have developed the world's 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 robot's end effector, the parallel link mechanism of its pressing arm, and the compliance control for providing an appropriate sense of pressure.
We developed the world's first hair-washing robot equipped with scrubbing fingers. This robot assists in washing hair in hospitals or care facilities, and allows liability relief of healthcare professionals or care workers and higher quality of life for patients or members in need of nursing care. It features the mechanical and control technology for touching someone gently on the head, for instance, the self-aligning mechanism and the cylindrical rack mechanism of its end effector, the parallel link mechanism of its pressing arm, and the compliance control for providing appropriate sense of pressure.
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