ENGINEERING THE HUMAN TOUCH: MIMICKING THE ART OF THAI MASSAGE

Objective: Massage has been used for several thousand years, both for therapeutic and relaxation purposes. Massage is known to be effective in relieving pain, stress, anxiety, and therefore improving health for both patients and ordinary people. Access to massage is still very limited at present. One way to improve the access is via the use of massage chairs. Several types of massage chairs have been developed but customers still feel that their performances are too mechanical, unlike the massage performed by human masseurs. The objective of this work is to design a massage chair that can mimic or perform massage activities similar to human masseurs as much as possible. Design and results: The work was performed in 3 phases; study phase, in which Thai massage was studied in some detail, massage chair design phase, and prototype and test phase. It was found that Thai massage could be characterized by 3 key actions; pull, press, pin or 3Ps for short. A massage chair was designed in such a way that it could perform back massage according to the 3P actions similar to human masseurs. A test of the prototype was carried out with 40 potential customers in Bangkok. The test results showed that the chair performed satisfactorily and the massage performed was more ‘human–like' than those performed by existing roller-type massage chairs. A number of improvements were suggested by those participated in the test, however. Conclusions: This study indicates that design and development of more ‘human–like' massage chairs is possible and, if successful, would improve access to massage for many. Such wideraccess to ‘human-like' massage chairs would help improve health and quality of life both patients and general public.