Bathing assistive devices and robots for the elderly

Abstract

The issue of aging population has become a severe problem that restricts global development. Thus, the development of bathing robots for the elderly is of great significance for the national strategy of actively addressing population aging. However, there is a lack of systematic review and analysis for the elderly bathing aids and robots, and the trend of the future development is also unclear. Therefore, by reviewing the relevant literature, this paper systematically analyzes the technical characteristics and usage scenarios of the lying, sitting and auxiliary posture, based on the bathing methods, bathing modes, and post bath care, which can clarify the current research status of bathing aids and robots for the elderly. Meanwhile, from the perspectives of the structural design, motion control and information intelligence, the key technologies and existing problems of bathing aids and robots are elaborated, and the relevant technical system is sorted out. Finally, based on the future of technological elderly care and the elderly bathing needs, the development trend of elderly bathing aids and robots is prospected, and the reference and suggestions for its research and development is provided, which has positive research significance.

Keywords

Elderly people / Assistant bathing aids / Bathing robot / Disabled elderly / Semi-disabled elderly

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jian Li: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Yadong Mo: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Funding acquisition. Shijie Jiang: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Investigation. Lifang Ma: Writing - review & editing, Resources. Ying Zhang: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Shimin Wei: Supervision, Resources, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work is partly supported by the National Key R & D Program of China (2020YFC2007700), Interdisciplinary Team of Intelligent Elderly Care and Rehabilitation in the “Double first-class” Construction of BUPT (2023SYLTD04), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of BUPT (510224074), the BUPT excellent Ph.D. Students Foundation (CX2023315). Meanwhile, thanks for the helps of Diansheng Chen, Jianyi Zhang, and Xinyang Zhao.

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