An effective design method for welfare robot and its application to the design of meal-assistance robot

Recently, many welfare robots have been developed to solve problems in elderly society. However, very few welfare robots have been successfully commercialized. One of the reasons for the difficulty in commercializing them is the insufficient method of designing those kinds of robots. The present research aims to develop an effective design method for welfare robots. The author proposes a method focusing on the early stage of the mechanical design as the conceptual and basic design process: 1) prior research to investigate the conditions for evaluating the design, 2) arranging the goal for the evaluation items, 3) preliminary tests to investigate the standards of evaluation, 4) mock-up to determine the standards, and 5) specifications for detailed design. The proposed method concentrating on the concept design is applied to the design of a meal-assistance robot mechanism. The design derived by the proposed method is quite similar to the concept of the most recent version of the robot developed by the conventional design method as determined by interviewing medical staff.