介護用装着型ヒューマン・アシスト装置に関する研究 : 第1報, コンセプト, システム設計と実機の開発

In order to care bed-bound and disabled people without charging both patients and nurses with physical and mental stress, we have developed a robotic prototype of a human-assisting system, called the Human-Assisting RObot (HARO). It is requested that patients enjoy their daily life and cares without giving physical and mental burdens to nursing people. There are two ways to care the patients. One is to conduct the cares by an intelligent robot autonomously, another is to be performed by a human-assisting system. Since we believe it is necessary to combine humman's cognitive capability and robot's power, we have developed a robotic prototype of a human-assisting system as a wearable power assisting system including human's intention, skill and cognition. In this paper, the concepts based on the practical experiences of care, system design, developed robot and the exprimental results are described.