Development and quantitative assessment of an elbow joint robot for elderly care training

A robotic simulator for elderly caregiver training has an important role with the continuous increase in the proportion of the elderly in the society. Caregivers or therapists, especially the novices, need training in caregiving skills. While one of the best methods is to practice the skills with a real elderly person, there are obstacles such as recruitment of subjects and the fatigue experienced by them from repeated training sessions. To improve the effectiveness of caregiver training, we developed an elderly joint simulator of a body part for training purposes. In this study, three experts with years of experience in elderly care participated in the acquisition of data, such as elbow joint angle, force torque, and pressure value, while performing the range of motion exercise using the proposed elderly elbow joint robot for comparison with those from novices. Furthermore, experiments were conducted as pre-evaluation, post-evaluation I (after 30 min), and post-evaluation II (after 1 month). For quantitative assessment of caregiver training, two parameters as the mean of range of elbow joint angle and the mean of range of force torque were extracted, and the results of the experts and trainees were compared. The comparison showed a statistically significant difference between pre- and post-evaluation. Hence, in this study, we conclude that our proposed approach can potentially improve caregiving and nursing skills, after further research.