Design and evaluation method for living function resilient equipment based on daily living systems science

Abstract

As a design and evaluation method for developing assistive technology for people with disabilities, the authors developed a new method for describing and analyzing daily behavior as graph structure data based on the MODAPTS method, which is widely used for the analysis of operations in industrial plants. As an example in this study, we focus on helping hemiplegic people to cut vegetables for cooking. By applying a living systems analysis using the developed method, the authors newly created a prototype of a passive kitchen robotic arm that does not need electricity. The robotic arm has a mechanism for holding vegetables by holding the vegetables from above. The authors conducted experiments to evaluate the usefulness of the developed passive robotic arm.