title: Study on a practical robotic follower to support home oxygen therapy patients--questionnaire-based concept evaluation by the patients-.
abstract: Home oxygen therapy (HOT) is a medical treatment for the patients suffering from severe lung diseases. Although walking outdoors is recommended for the patients to maintain physical strength, the patients always have to carry a portable oxygen supplier which is not sufficiently light weight for this purpose. Our ultimate goal is to develop a mobile robot to carry an oxygen tank and follow a patient in an urban outdoor environment. We have proposed a mobile robot with a tether interface to detect the relative position of the foregoing patient. In this paper, we report the questionnaire-based evaluation about the two developed prototypes by the HOT patients. We conduct maneuvering experiments, and then obtained questionnaire-based evaluations from the 20 patients. The results show that the basic following performance is sufficient and the pulling force of the tether is sufficiently small for the patients. Moreover, the patients prefer the small-sized prototype for compactness and light weight to the middle-sized prototype which can carry larger payload. We also obtained detailed requests to improve the robots. Finally the results show the general concept of the robot is favorably received by the patients.
authors.forename: Gen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Endo
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Iemura
authors.forename: Edwardo F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Fukushima
authors.forename: Shigeo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hirose
authors.forename: Masatsugu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Iribe
authors.forename: Ryota
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ikeda
authors.forename: Kohei
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Onishi
authors.forename: Naoto
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Maeda
authors.forename: Toshio
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takubo
authors.forename: Mineko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ohira
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000628:therapy; D010102:Oxygen Inhalation Therapy / Q000295:instrumentation*; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires