Skincare robot

With aging, human skin develops a dry condition called senile xerosis. The skin lesion can be prevented by daily skin care such as applying an ointment containing moisturizing factors several times a day. Aged persons, however, have difficulties in accessing their back and rely therefore on nursing care for such treatment. Unfortunately, in underpopulated areas such nursing care may not always be available. To tackle this problem, the concept of a skincare robot is proposed. The feasibility of the concept is then confirmed by designing a real skincare robot and by performing experiments for applying ointment on human’s back. The robot developed is able to recognize the shape of the body, to plan the appropriate motion paths for the hand, and to execute the task without applying any excessive forces.

Video1 (2.6Mbyte) in 2006

Video2 (3.8Mbyte) in 2007

Video3 (1.9Mbyte) in 2006

Fig. 1 Experimental set-up for skincare robot

Fig. 2 Before

Fig. 3 After

References

1. Yuichi Tsumaki, Takayuki Kon, Asami Suginuma, Kei Imada, Akinori Sekiguchi, Dragomir N. Nenchev, Hajime Nakano and Katsumi Hanada, Development of a Skincare Robot, Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Pasadena, California, pp. 2963-2968, 2008.

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