Daily support robots that move on me

Abstract

Today, wearable devices, that can constantly support us by being worn on a daily basis, are gathering attention. In contrast, although we can also find an increase of personal robots in daily life, "wearable robots" are not so prevalent.We developed a wearable robot as a partner, that moves on the human body autonomously. As daily support, the robot has an application to correct wearers' sitting posture. It estimates wearers' body state from some sensors, and if it perceives wearers' bad posture or habit, points them out by moving to a region of the problem directly. We may be able to make use of it, not only to correct our posture or bad habit, but especially, to train children.

PostureChair: A Real-Time, As-Needed Feedback System for Improving the Sitting Posture of Office Workers

“…[27,47,56]), wearable sensors (e.g. [14,51]), and pressure or force sensors incorporated into office chairs (e.g. [10,24,37,52,55,62]).…”

“…Wearables might be a more preferable posture-detection method when the target user base is more mobile than the typical office worker. Children are far more mobile than office workers, and would likely be more attracted to the novelty of a wearable robot, which is why Saga et al designed a "daily support robot" [51] for use by children. internally, but they both appear to be based on accelerometer data similar to the other activity trackers.…”

“…Their work focused mainly on posture classification and did not include tests of the feedback system. Another unusual feedback modality was proposed by Saga et al [51], with their "daily support robot" moving at a point on the wearer's body to indicate an area of poor posture, however this feedback was entirely theoretical and was never implemented.…”