Development of drinking support device for spinal cord injuries to enhance quality of life

Spinal cord injury causes a paralysis of any part of the body depending on which part of spinal cord is destroyed. It is well known that a severity of the paralysis is determined by both a location and a degree of injury in the vertebral bones. For example, in a case of injury at the C4 vertebral bone a patient is paralyzed from the neck down, and needs a caregiver to help almost all activities of daily life. Recently, a quality of life is considered to be important, and various welfare devices have been proposed to realize a better life of a patient. Regarding a C4 patient, drinking water by oneself whenever he/she wants to do is strongly desired in the daily life. In this paper, we develop a drinking support device for a C4 patient. The device is evaluated in a rehabilitation hospital, and it is shown that all requirements on structure, degree of freedom, safety, conform, daily maintenance, etc. are satisfied with an acceptable level.