Handling Comparison Between A Human And A Patient Simulator For Nursing Care Related Physical Human-Robot Interaction

The occurrence of musculoskeletal diseases among nursing staff leads to an early withdrawal from the profession, which reinforces the already existing lack of caregivers. To counteract this problem, we would like to provide physical relief through robotic assistance at the bedside. However, the problem arises that for safety reasons robotic assistance concepts should not be tested on humans at first. In this case, patient simulators with an average person's weight can function as a substitute. For the best results, both cases should behave very similarly when evaluating robot assistance concepts so that the transfer from patient simulator to human is small and therefore no major adjustments need to be made. To measure this potential difference, we have compared the handling properties of both cases in this paper. We examined force measuring platform data while a nurse mobilized an 80 kg human and a patient simulator from the back to the side. The experimental results show that moving a patient simulator is more physically demanding compared to moving a human with similar weight and that conventional collaborative lightweight robots are able to push and move a patient simulator that is weighing far higher than the robot's actual payload suggests.