Experimental Investigation of Powered Lifting Assistance Device Introducing Direct Touch of Caregiver on Care Receiver Author names and affiliations

Transferring a patient from one place to another is one of the most strenuous works in nursing care. To address this issue, we proposed a concept for a lifting assistance device using two cables to achieve operations of translation, rotation and stay. It facilitates direct touch between the caregiver and the care receiver, allowing intuitive position and posture adjustments based on the caregiver's intention, detected through variations in cable tensions. To investigate the effectiveness of this concept, lifting experiments using a fabricated prototype were conducted. Twelve subjects, including four physical therapists (PTs) and eight subjects having no transfer experience, experienced caregivers and a dummy was used as a care receiver. Results show that regardless of the transfer experience, the caregiver's intention detection and adjustment of the care receiver's position and posture were successfully achieved with an accuracy of over 70 %. Survey feedback collected after the lifting experiments confirms that utilizing direct touch between the caregiver and the care receiver is highly valued by all subjects with a 5-point Likert Scale in both PTs (average score: 4.8 points) and nonexperienced subjects (average score: 4.3 points).