The Design of a Nursing Bed Based on Eye Movement Control

Population aging is becoming more and more serious, and more and more elderly people need to be cared for. In this situation, there is an urgent need for nursing beds with multiple functions, especially those that can be controlled by the patient's intention. At present, the existing nursing beds have some supporting functions, such as helping patients lift their backs and flip their bodies through electric devices. However, they have some shortcomings in allowing patients to control the movement of nursing beds. In order to solve the above problems, a nursing bed was built in this study by using an eye tracker and hub motors. The movement of the nursing bed can be controlled through the patient's eye gaze point. Moreover, the nursing bed has four motion modes: low-speed mobile, high-speed mobile, left-turn, and right-turn. This study obtained the following data from ten experiments to prove the nursing bed's rapidity, flexibility and safety. The experimental results show that the average time required by the nursing bed from starting to entering any motion mode is 28ms. The average time required for the nursing bed to switch between two motion modes is 106ms. The average time required for the nursing bed to stop moving from any motion mode is 93ms, which proves nursing bed can switch motion mode flexibly and has the emergency stop function. Besides, this study proved the feasibility of the nursing bed running under a heavy load through three experiments. This study provides a feasible method for patients to control their movement independently.