| Sumario: | Purpose Conventional excretion care using diapers is one of the hardest task that causes severe burden on caregivers (Kumagai et al., 2005). In nursing homes, excretion care is performed about six times a day and this repeated excretion care task increases the risk of musculoskeletal disorders in caregivers. With the development of robotic technology, care robots that can help caregivers in excretion care have been developed (Yamazaki et al., 2012). However, study on the effectiveness of care robots, which quantitatively compares and evaluates the physical care burden between using diapers (MC, human manual excretion care) and care robots (RC, robot-aided excretion care) is very limited. To conduct a systematic comparative study on MC and RC, we developed a hierarchical care task model for each type. An experimental study was performed to compare physical care burden for each care task. Method The hierarchical excretion care task model (HECTM) was developed by classifying tasks into routine and non-routine actions in MC (Figure 1 a) and RC (Figure 1 b) and structuring them according to the excretion care task scenarios. An experiment to evaluate the physical burden of MC and RC was conducted with 10 caregivers. CareBidet (CURACO, South Korea) was used as the excretion care robot (Figure 2). The evaluation task was based on HECTM and there were 23 tasks in MC and 42 tasks in RC. The physical care burden was confirmed through muscle activity based on the electromyographic (EMG) signal measured by eight surface EMG sensors. Muscle activity was normalized to the maximum voluntary contraction for each muscle (%MVC) and the average was calculated. To study the effect of time on muscle activity, task time in %MVC (%MVCtime) was measured. In addition, the RPE (Rating of perceived Exertion) scale was used to confirm the subjective care burden. Finally, to compare the physical care burden of MC and RC carried out during the day in nursing homes, the number of excretion care tasks performed by caregivers at the nursing home was calculated, and three excretion care scenarios were established and compared. Results and Discussion As a result of comparing the physical care burden by excretion care work scenario reflecting the number of excretion care performed, MC+RC had the highest physical care burden among the three excretion care work scenarios, followed by MCall and RCall. Although RC could reduce the physical burden of the caregivers in excretion care during the day, the steps involved in using robot for excretion care and the management and storage of excretion care robots required heavy physical burden.
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