Development of a face robot for cranial nerves examination training

The cranial nerves examination is one part of neurological examination. Neurologic medical staffs, especially the novices, need to be trained and grasp this skill. There are various methodologies to help the trainee to accumulate experiences. However, the best way is to practice on the real patient. The methods have their own drawbacks such as lack of active interactions, limitation of multi-symptoms' reproducing, etc. In order to improve the training effectiveness, a face robot (Fig. 1) is proposed in this paper for cranial nerves examination training as one part of the whole body patient robot named WKP (Waseda Kotokagaku Patient). In this robot, various symptoms of optical tracking, eyeball movements, facial paralysis are simulated and shown to the trainee. Finally, a set of experiments was performed to evaluate our proposed mechanism and control system. Three neurologists with over 30 years' experience were invited to show their opinions on the reproductions of the symptoms, and to discuss the results. All the results lead to the improvements for further research.