Research and developmet of Behavior Monitoring System(BMR) for premature baby under intensive care

早产的婴儿在一个非常不寻常的孵化器环境中开始了子宫外的生活。在设计保温箱时，虽然目的是为了维持早产儿的生命，提高早产儿完整存活的可能性，但考虑到保温箱的环境条件对早产儿的行为发育和交流也是非常重要的。支持人类交流及其发展的技术被称为“人机界面”。当考虑人机界面时，“用户友好”的概念强调机器的易于操作。然而，人机界面也强调，机器的设计应该消除机器周围的人之间的沟通障碍。我们可以利用人机界面技术来考虑孵化器的环境。从这个角度出发，我们调查了与重症监护相关的培养箱环境特征，并考察了它们对极早产儿和医护人员行为的影响。我们还开发了一个基于计算机的行为监测机器人（BMR），用于测量孵化器环境对婴儿行为的影响。BMR监测到新生儿重症监护室医护人员的活动引起的环境刺激使极早产儿表现出包括情绪表达在内的各种行为，而我们观察到医护人员的行为对婴儿的交流行为没有反应，这主要是由于培养箱环境和护理程序的人机界面问题。这些结果表明，有必要重新考虑新生儿重症监护的环境条件，并开发一种新的重症监护模式，允许婴儿和看护人之间的行为互动。

The prematurely born infant begins extra-uterine life in the very unusual environment of an incubator. When designing incubators, although they are aimed at sustaining life and enhancing the possibility of the intact survival of the prematurely born infant, it is very important to also consider the environmental conditions of incubators in terms of the infants' behavioral development and communication.The technology that supports human communication and its development is called "Human Interface". When considering the human interface with machines, the notion of "User Friendly" emphasizes the easy operation of the machine. However the human interface also emphasizes that the machine should be designed to eliminate communication barriers among people around machines. We can utilize the human interface technology to consider the incubator environment.From this point or view, we investigated the incubator environmental characteristics associated with intensive care and examined their influence on the behaviors of extremely premature infants and medical nursing staff. We also developed a computer-based behavior monitoring robot (BMR) for measuring the influence of the incubator environment on infants' behaviors.BMR monitored that extremely premature infants in incubators showed various kinds of behaviors including emotional expressions in response to the environmental stimulation caused by the activities of medical nursing staff in the neonatal intensive care unit, while we observed that behaviors of the medical nursing staff were not responsive to the infants' communicative behaviors, because of the human interface problem in the incubator environment and the nursing program. These results suggested there is a need to reconsider the environmental conditions of neonatal intensive care and to develop a new paradigm of intensive care which would allow behavioral interactions between an infant and a caretaker.