On an universal design for controller of home care equipments

Abstract

The home care equipments to assist the elderly or handicapped person are usually used by one or more limited family persons in their house. The controller of them therefore must be designed to be usable by all people. However, it is independently designed by each manufacturing company. In this work, the authors have investigated not only the mechanical properties of button switch, as pressing force, size and stroke, but the cognition of button switch as the size, color and character type. Furthermore, a new controller of care bed was designed functionally based on the universal design concept. Seven types of mock up for controller were made using the stereolithography system. The operating feeling of them was examined by younger persons. As a result, the property of controller which can be easily used for everyone was proposed in this work.