CN118209153A - Determination system - Google Patents

Abstract

The present disclosure provides a determination system for determining a health state based on a toilet usage history and a stool shape at the time of excretion. The judgment system of the present disclosure is provided with: an acquisition unit that acquires use start information indicating that a user has started using the toilet device, and faeces falling information indicating that faeces have fallen into the toilet after the use has started; a detection unit that detects a defecation time required for the user to fall from the start of use of the toilet, based on the information acquired by the acquisition unit; and a determination unit that determines a health state of the user based on the defecation time detected by the detection unit.

Description

Determination system

Technical Field

The present invention relates to a system for determining a health state based on a toilet use history and a stool shape at the time of excretion.

Background

Since bowel movements are considered to reflect the intestinal environment, there have been many proposals in the past for systems for determining health status based on bowel movement conditions.

In recent years, the very advanced society has a large proportion of people who complain about subjective symptoms of constipation. This is because, as the age increases, the bowel movement declines, and constipation tends to occur, but on the other hand, individuals who tend to self-feel constipation have a large difference, and in a state where no self-feel occurs, the constipation continues for a long period of time, so that the situation of serious hospitalization increases.

If the situation of defecation such as constipation can be objectively grasped, not only the user can be given a sense of security, but also the nursing person such as a family person can be given a sense of security.

For example, patent document 1 discloses the following technique: the time required from the start of the use of the toilet to the end thereof is assumed as the defecation time, the length of the defecation time is assumed to be the degree of difficulty in defecation accompanied by pain such as a holding force of a user for facilitating defecation, and the user is determined to be in a constipation state when the defecation time is long.

Prior art literature

Patent literature

Patent document 1: japanese patent application laid-open No. 2021-111268

Disclosure of Invention

In the technique of patent document 1, as a method for calculating the defecation time, the use start timing of the toilet is set to the timing of sitting on the warm water to flush the toilet seat, the use end timing of the toilet is set to the timing of the shower function of the user to flush the toilet seat with warm water, and the time difference between these two timings is calculated as the defecation time.

However, the shower function of the warm water toilet seat is not limited to a limited function of performing local cleaning of anus and the like at the timing when the entire toilet is finished, and as is widely emphasized in the instruction manual of the warm water toilet seat at hand, there are many cases where the shower function is used around anus before the toilet as a stimulus for promoting the defecation. That is, the method of deriving the bowel movement time using the timing of the shower function lacks reliability, and there is a problem that the accuracy of constipation determination is low.

The present invention has been made to solve the above-described conventional problems, and an object of the present invention is to detect an accurate defecation time and to improve the accuracy of determination of a health state such as constipation, without depending on an operation of a user such as a shower function that has to clean a toilet seat with warm water.

The judgment system of the present invention for solving the above-described conventional problems comprises: an acquisition unit that acquires use start information indicating that a user starts using the toilet device, and faeces falling information indicating that faeces fall into the toilet after use has started; a detection unit that detects a defecation time required for the user from the start of toilet use to the start of defecation, based on the information acquired by the acquisition unit; and a determination unit that determines a health state of the user based on the defecation time detected by the detection unit, the determination system being capable of detecting a defecation time using defecation drop information into a toilet.

The determination system according to the present invention has the following effects: the toilet bowl is not affected by the timing of the shower function of the toilet bowl when the user uses warm water, and even if the user does not use the shower function at all, the toilet bowl can detect the toilet bowl time by using the toilet bowl falling information, thereby improving the judgment accuracy of the health state such as constipation.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a diagram showing an application example of the embodiment.

Fig. 2 is a block diagram of the determination system in the embodiment.

Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram showing a relationship between faecal fall information and faecal time in the embodiment.

Description of the reference numerals

1: A toilet device; 2: a toilet bowl; 3: a toilet seat; 4: a toilet cover; 5: a toilet seat box; 10: a judgment system; 11: a control unit; 12: an acquisition unit; 13: a seating detection unit; 14: a falling detection unit; 15: a stool character detecting unit; 16: a measurement unit; 17: a determination unit; 18: and a memory cell.

Detailed Description

Next, a determination system according to an embodiment will be described with reference to the drawings.

(Embodiment: structure)

As shown in fig. 1, the toilet apparatus 1 includes, for example, a toilet bowl 2, a toilet seat 3, a toilet lid 4, a toilet seat box 5, a control unit 11, and an acquisition unit 12.

The toilet seat 3, the toilet cover 4, and the toilet box 5 are provided on the upper side of the toilet bowl 2. The control unit 11 is accommodated inside the toilet seat box 5, for example.

As will be described later, the acquisition unit 12 is constituted by a plurality of detection units (i.e., sensor modules). As shown, the acquisition unit 12 is mainly mounted to the toilet seat 3 or the toilet seat box 5.

As shown in fig. 2, the determination system 10 is basically configured by a control unit 11 and an acquisition unit 12.

The acquisition unit 12 includes at least one detection unit that detects a toilet use condition, a defecation condition, and the like of a user. The acquisition unit 12 includes a seating detection unit 13 and a stool drop detection unit 14. Preferably, the acquisition unit 12 further includes a stool shape detection unit 15.

The seating detection unit 13 is a sensor that detects that a user is seated on the toilet seat. Examples of the seating detection unit 13 are: (i) Means for performing a mechanical operation by a portion of the toilet seat and a portion to which the weight of the user is applied, and performing an energization detection by a mechanical switch; or (ii) means for detecting the presence of a person by receiving reflected light from a human body by irradiating infrared rays with a human sensor or the like provided near the toilet seat.

The stool drop detection unit 14 is a sensor module that detects dropping of stool into the stool at the time of defecation. Examples of the stool drop detection means 14 are (i) means for detecting the dropping of the stool from a change in an image of the inside of the stool sequentially captured using a camera, or (ii) means for detecting the dropping of the stool by receiving at least one of reflected light and reflected waves of the dropping stool by irradiating at least one of infrared rays and radio waves on the same principle as the above-described human sensor.

The feces quality detection unit 15 captures an image of feces (hereinafter, simply referred to as "feces image") in the toilet. Examples of the stool shape detecting unit 15 are (i) a unit that photographs stool images using a general visible light camera, or (ii) a unit that uses an infrared camera that facilitates dark photographing. The stool shape detecting means 15 may be constituted by a device common to the stool shape detecting means 14.

The control unit 11 performs detection processing and determination processing based on the input information acquired by the acquisition unit 12. Further, the control unit 11 performs successive control of the load operation such as the generation of warm water by the heater operation and the spray operation by the pump operation.

The control unit 11 includes a detection unit 16 and a determination unit 17. Preferably, the control unit 11 further comprises a storage unit 18.

The detection unit 16 detects the defecation time or the defecation property (for example, shape, color, or quantity) of an image obtained by photographing the condition in the toilet using the number of times, time, defecation frequency, and the like of using the toilet based on the input information acquired from the acquisition unit 12.

The determination unit 17 determines a health state such as constipation based on the information of the defecation time, the defecation frequency, and the defecation property detected by the detection unit 16.

The storage unit 18 stores the information of the defecation time, the defecation frequency, and the defecation property detected by the detection unit 16, and the health status such as constipation determined by the determination unit 17.

(Embodiment: action/action)

Next, the operation and effects of the determination system 10 will be described.

When a user uses the toilet device 1 to perform a bowel movement, as shown in the positional relationship shown in fig. 1, the user opens the toilet cover 4 and sits on the toilet seat 3 located on the toilet 2. After the user sits down, the control means 11 detects the first timing as the timing at which the sitting down is detected by the sitting down detecting means 13, and in parallel, the control means 11 sequentially starts detection of the condition inside the toilet bowl 2 as an image by the feces quality detecting means 15 (for example, a visible light camera). Here, as a general tendency, the user starts to feel a force from this timing to promote defecation.

After that, when the first time of defecation starts, the control unit 11 detects a second timing as a timing when the feces falls toward the inside of the toilet bowl 2 (i.e., the bedpan) by the feces falling detection unit 14.

Then, the user repeatedly performs the holding down and defecation for several times. The user ends the last defecation to leave the toilet seat 3, and the seating detection unit 13 detects the user's unseating. At the same time, the control unit 11 detects a third timing, which is a timing when the last feces falls down to the inside of the toilet bowl 2 (i.e., the toilet bowl), by the feces falling detection unit 14. The control unit 11 stops the image detection of the inside of the toilet bowl 2 by the feces property detection unit 15. The control unit 11 stores the time information detected by the acquisition unit 12 and the information of the image in the storage unit 18. The time information and the stool image information include date information of year, month, and day.

The detection unit 16 detects the defecation time, the defecation property, and the defecation frequency by the following method.

First, a method for detecting the defecation time will be described.

The defecation time includes 3 defecation times using the first to third times detected by the acquisition unit 12. These 3 kinds of defecation times are output as detection values by the detection unit 16.

The first urination time is a detection time from the first time to the second time. That is, the first defecation time is a time required from the timing when the user sits on the toilet device 1 to the start of defecation.

The second defecation time is a detection time from the second time to the third time. That is, the time required from the timing when the user starts to relieve oneself to the timing when the last defecation ends.

The third defecation time is a detection time from the first time to the third time. That is, the time required from the time when the user sits on the toilet device 1 to the time when the last defecation ends is obtained.

Next, a method for measuring the stool characteristics will be described.

The stool shape detecting means 15 (for example, a visible light camera) always captures a stool falling image of the inside of the toilet bowl 2. Since the falling stool is highly likely to be scattered in the air and falls down while containing a lot of water (i.e., diarrhea stool), the stool shape detection means 15 outputs an image that can distinguish at least whether or not it is diarrhea stool. And also can output an image of hard feces (i.e., hard ball feces) similar to rabbit feces, which is unique to constipation, according to the image of feces falling to the bottom of the toilet bowl 2. That is, based on the stool image captured by the camera, at least 3 grades of diarrhea stool, general stool, and hard stool are classified and outputted as measurement values.

Here, the feces properties indicate the state of feces such as the shape, color, amount, etc. of feces, although there is no deep contact. The detection unit 16 recognizes blood stool by recognizing a color from the stool image of the stool shape detection unit 15, or outputs a stool volume obtained by comparing the stool volume with the stool volume in the stool image by grasping the stool volume in advance as a detection value.

Next, a method for measuring the defecation frequency will be described. The series of defecation actions of separating from the toilet seat 3 (i.e., exiting the toilet) after the user sits on the toilet seat 3 of the toilet device 1 and performs defecation is counted as the number of times of defecation 1. The defecation frequency, which is the number of times of defecation per week, is outputted as a detection value. In addition to the defecation frequency (for example, the number of times of defecation per week), the case where the defecation property obtained by the above-described detection of the defecation property is hard is stored in the storage unit 18. Thus, the frequency of hard bowel movements (for example, the proportion of hard bowel movements in the content of the bowel movements per week) is outputted as a measurement value.

In this way, the detection unit 16 can output the defecation time, the defecation frequency, the defecation property, and the frequency of hard bowel movement based on the defecation property as detection values.

The determination unit 17 determines the health status such as constipation based on the values (e.g., defecation time, defecation frequency, defecation character, and hard stool frequency) detected by the detection unit 16, in combination with the following three methods.

In the first method, first, the determination unit 17 determines, while taking reliability into consideration, any one of the first to third bowel movement times detected by the detection unit 16 as a bowel movement time suitable for determining a health state such as constipation.

In many cases, the third defecation time (i.e., the time required from the time when the user sits in the toilet device 1 to the time when the last defecation ends) is used. This is because the third defecation time is significantly longer than the first to second defecation times, and the present invention is premised on that the length of the defecation time is approximately proportional to the degree of difficulty in defecation accompanied by pain such as a user's holding force to promote defecation. For example, it is advantageous to set the threshold value of the time for which constipation is determined to be already present to "30 minutes or more", the threshold value of the time for which constipation is determined to be prone to be present to "20 minutes or more and less than 30 minutes", and the magnitude of the threshold value to a relatively large value (for example, 10 minute intervals), because even if there is a difference in the defecation time each time, the influence on the determination accuracy is small.

In order to confirm the reliability of the third bowel movement time measured at this time, the determination unit 17 compares the third bowel movement time measured at last time stored in the storage unit 18 with the third bowel movement time measured at this time. For example, when the difference between them is 10 minutes or less, the determination unit 17 determines the health state such as constipation using the value of the third bowel movement time detected this time by making sure that the value is a stable value that does not significantly differ from the third bowel movement time detected last time.

On the other hand, in recent years, due to the diversification of the use methods of the toilet space by the user, for example, there are cases where the user brings a smartphone into the toilet and reads or browses WEB or the like, and the user is interested in behaviors other than excretion. In this case, the third bowel movement time is not a stable value, which is 30 minutes on one day but 15 minutes on the other day. Therefore, the first defecation time (i.e., the time required from the timing when the user sits in the toilet device 1 to the start of defecation) is used. In a period from the use start timing of the toilet apparatus 1 to the start of defecation, many users tend to try to feel a feeling of holding down in order to promote defecation, and are not easily affected by the use of the smartphone.

In this way, the determination unit 17 can determine the defecation time optimal for determining the health status such as constipation from the first to third defecation times, and can determine the status of constipation by comparing the defecation time with the preset threshold value.

In the second method, the defecation frequency is used to determine the health status such as constipation.

As described above, the series of defecation actions of the user who sits on the toilet seat 3 of the toilet device 1 and then leaves the toilet seat 3 (i.e., exits the toilet) is counted 1 time as the number of times of defecation, and the count value is stored in the storage unit 18 together with the date and time information, whereby the determination unit 17 grasps the number of times of defecation per week as the frequency of defecation.

The present invention is premised on that the frequency of defecation is approximately proportional to the difficulty of defecation accompanied by pain such as holding back by a user in order to promote defecation. For example, by setting the threshold of the frequency of defecation determined to be in the constipation state to be "less than once per week" and setting the threshold of the frequency of defecation determined to be in the constipation tendency to be "more than once per week and less than twice per week", the conditions of three grades of defecation, namely, constipation state, constipation tendency and non-constipation, can be determined.

In the third method, the frequency of hard bowel movements is used to determine the health status such as constipation.

As described above, the detecting unit 16 discriminates which of diarrhea stool, general stool, and hard stool the present defecation trait is based on the stool image captured by the stool trait detecting unit 15 every time the defecation occurs, and stores the present defecation trait information in the storing unit 18 together with the date and time information. In this way, the determination unit 17 grasps the proportion of hard stools in all the stools in the past one week, that is, the frequency of hard stools.

The present invention is premised on that the frequency of hard bowel movement is approximately proportional to the difficulty of bowel movement accompanied by pain such as a user's effort to promote bowel movement. Therefore, for example, by setting the threshold value of the frequency of hard stools determined to be in a constipation state to "25% or more" and setting the threshold value of the frequency of hard stools determined to be in a constipation tendency to "16% or more and less than 25%", it is possible to determine the status of three levels of defecation, constipation tendency and non-constipation.

In this way, the determination unit 17 can determine the health status such as constipation with higher accuracy by combining the three methods based on the value (e.g., defecation time, defecation frequency, defecation property, and hard stool frequency) detected by the detection unit 16.

In the conventional art, the problem is that the user is not affected by the timing of flushing the toilet shower function with warm water, and even when the user does not use the shower function at all, the user can detect the defecation time by using the defecation drop information into the toilet, so that the user operation is not required, and the convenience can be dramatically improved.

Industrial applicability

As described above, the determination system of the present invention improves the accuracy of determining the health state such as constipation by detecting the defecation time, which is one of the main parameters for determining the state of defecation and the like, with high accuracy, and can be applied not only to defecation management but also to a health management system based on vital data of livestock or pets.

Claims (8)

1. A judgment system, wherein the judgment system comprises:

An acquisition unit that acquires use start information indicating that a user has started using the toilet device and faeces falling information indicating that faeces have fallen into the toilet after the use has started;

A detection unit that detects a defecation time required for the user to fall from the start of use of the toilet, based on the information acquired by the acquisition unit; and

A determination unit that determines a health state of the user based on the defecation time detected by the detection unit.

2. The decision system of claim 1, wherein,

The use start information is information related to sitting on a toilet seat in the toilet apparatus,

The stool-drop information is information related to dropping of the stool originally generated in the toilet apparatus into the stool.

3. The decision system of claim 1, wherein,

The use start information is information related to the dropping of the feces originally generated in the toilet device into the toilet,

The stool-drop information is information related to dropping of the stool finally generated in the toilet apparatus into the stool.

4. The decision system of claim 1, wherein,

The use start information is information related to sitting on a toilet seat in the toilet apparatus,

The stool-drop information is information related to dropping of the stool finally generated in the toilet apparatus into the stool.

5. The decision system according to any one of claim 2 to 4, wherein,

When the defecation time is longer than a predetermined time, the determination unit determines that the subject person is in a constipation state.

6. The decision system of claim 5, wherein,

The determination unit compares the bowel movement time with at least one or more threshold values to determine the health state.

7. The decision system according to claim 5 or 6, wherein,

The determination means determines the health state of the subject based on at least one piece of information selected from the group consisting of (i) a defecation frequency, (ii) the number and time of use of the toilet, (iii) an image obtained by photographing the condition in the toilet, and (iv) a determination result obtained by determining the property of excrement using the photographed image in the toilet, in addition to the defecation time of the user.

8. The decision system according to any one of claims 5 to 7, wherein,

The determination system further includes a storage unit that stores the defecation time,

The determination unit determines the health state of the subject based on the information stored in the storage unit.