抄録
Development of excretion support device is crucial in order to help the elderly and disabled become independent and reduce the burden on caregivers. The act of eliminating waste touches on individual dignity. Thus, the ability to perform this action independently is important for an individual to maintain self-respect. The objective of this study is to develop a system to support independent waste elimination for the handicapped persons on the upper limbs. Eliminating waste requires comprehensive support including removing clothes and transfer motion. In this study, however, we focus on cleaning up after eliminating wastes, which requires special psychological consideration, and an attempt to develop a device that assists with this task. In this paper, we propose a mechanism for an end effector with multiple fingers capable of gripping and passing toilet paper. We show an action to clean the genital area by causing the end effector to contact the buttocks using an arm actuator, while moving the end effector forward and rotating. In addition, we propose a mechanism for removing and collecting used paper. We achieved an 88% cleaning rate in motion experiments using simulated buttocks. These experiments demonstrated the effects and issues of the device.
