Abstract

Background: With the elderly population increasing at a phenomenal rate in the world, the disabled elderly care has become a hot issue concerned with society and government. The latest survey showed that the elder, who wish to grow old in their own house, is more than 85%. It is a pending problem that how to meet the elder's need and relieve the burden of society and their children. The nursing service market could reach 3.3 trillion yuan in 2020, and then the technology industry of elderly nursing will grow into a new increasing point for the national economy. Therefore, the informatization and robotization of elderly nursing will become the necessary development trend in the future.

Objective: To provide an overview of the existing nursing robots and introduce their classification, characteristics and development.

Methods: This paper reviews various productions and patents related to the nursing robot. The structural characteristics, differentiations and applications of the typical nursing robot are also introduced.

Results: The three types of the nursing robot are compared and analyzed, and the typical characteristics are concluded. The main problems in its development are analyzed, the development trend is foreseen, and the current and future research of the productions and patents on the nursing robot are discussed.

Conclusion: Nursing robots are divided into an independent nursing robot, rehabilitation nursing robot bed and multifunctional mobile nursing robot. The nursing robot has important practical significance for promoting social nursing services, and it plays an important role in improving nursing quality of patients and the elderly and reducing the pressure of nursing staff. Further improvements are needed in the aspects of reliability, comfortable capability, humanization, intelligence and security of the nursing robot. More patents on nursing robot should be invented.

Keywords: Design requirements, independent nursing robot, multi-functional, nursing, nursing bed, rehabilitation.