Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : March 04, 2024 - March 05, 2024
The purpose of this research is to develop a posture estimation method of nursing care givers using plantar pressure distribution. Since nursing care with improper posture can cause some diseases like a lower back pain, care givers had better be instructed about a proper posture of a nursing care in advance. Some researches of posture estimation of care givers have been conducted; however, some sensors were required to be attached to the care givers’ bodies for the motion measurements. Conversely, our proposed posture estimation method does not require any sensors to be attached to the body; a pressure sensor sheet is only required to be settled under the nursing care area, and the posture is estimated from plantar pressure distribution. That is, the height trend of the lower back is estimated from change in plantar pressure distribution by using a summation of the pressure distribution. The reason of estimating the lower back height is that in actual nursing care, lowering the lower back is important for preventing the back pain. In the experiments under the assumption that a care giver assisted a care recipient who moved from a bed to a wheelchair, a participant’s lifting up motion of a weight were conducted, and the postures of the participant were estimated by using the proposed method. As a result, the height trend of the lower back of the care giver were estimated correctly.
