3D Facial Pain Expression for a Care Training Assistant Robot in an Elderly Care Education Environment.

Miran Lee,Joo-Ho Lee,Dinh Tuan Tran

doi:10.3389/frobt.2021.632015

Abstract

As the elderly population increases, the importance of the caregiver’s role in the quality of life of the elderly has increased. To achieve effective feedback in terms of care and nursing education, it is important to design a robot that can express emotions or feel pain like an actual human through visual-based feedback. This study proposes a care training assistant robot (CaTARo) system with 3D facial pain expression that simulates an elderly person for improving the skills of workers in elderly care. First, in order to develop an accurate and efficient system for elderly care training, this study introduces a fuzzy logic–based care training evaluation method that can calculate the pain level of a robot for giving the feedback. Elderly caregivers and trainees performed the range of motion exercise using the proposed CaTARo. We obtained quantitative data from CaTARo, and the pain level was calculated by combining four key parameters using the fuzzy logic method. Second, we developed a 3D facial avatar for use in CaTARo that is capable of expressing pain based on the UNBC-McMaster Pain Shoulder Archive, and we then generated four pain groups with respect to the pain level. To mimic the conditions for care training with actual humans, we designed the system to provide pain feedback based on the opinions of experts. The pain feedback was expressed in real time by using a projector and a 3D facial mask during care training. The results of the study confirmed the feasibility of utilizing a care training robot with pain expression for elderly care training, and it is concluded that the proposed approach may be used to improve caregiving and nursing skills upon further research.

Highlights

Students who wish to become caregivers can receive the necessary education at a medical institute for a specific amount of time to improve their care skills
Considering a care training robot, we propose the use of care training assistant robot (CaTARo), which was developed as a method to effectively improve the care abilities of caregivers or students in preliminary studies (Murata et al, 2017; Lee et al, 2019a; Lee et al, 2020b)
These pressure sensor values are different for each participant because each participant may have applied different degrees of force and used different holding positions on the wrist of the robot

Summary

Introduction

Students who wish to become caregivers can receive the necessary education at a medical institute for a specific amount of time to improve their care skills. They can accumulate experience using traditional methods such as watching videos, reading books, using medical mannequins (Aung et al, 2012), and role-playing with one another to simulate the care of an elderly patient. It is necessary to develop an effective care training robot that can mimic the behavior or symptom of the elderly and to enable caregivers to practice elderly care skills. Simulator robots play an important role in teaching students how to evaluate clinical symptoms and diseases related to the muscle and joint (Diener and Hobbs, 2012; Mahoney et al, 2013)

Methods

Results

Conclusion