Patent ID: 8529534

Claim:
An excrement treating apparatus comprising: an excretion receiver to be worn by a person; and an apparatus body detachably connected with the excretion receiver; the excretion receiver including: a receiver body which receives excretions discharged from a wearer; and an excretion sensor which detects the excretions; the apparatus body including: a urine tank which stores urine; a vacuum pump which sucks in the air in the urine tank to suck out the urine received by the receiver body into the urine tank; a DC power supply; a switch circuit; a polarity reversal circuit; and a control unit which controls the vacuum pump, the switch circuit and the polarity reversal circuit, the excretion sensor including: one pair of urine sensor electrodes which detect urine received by the receiver body and are one of two pairs of electrodes extending in parallel along the receiver body and urine guides partially exposing the urine sensor electrodes formed into the receiver body; and one pair of feces sensor electrodes which detect feces received by the receiver body and are another one of the two pairs of electrodes and feces guides partially exposing the feces sensor electrodes formed into the receiver body, wherein the DC power supply applies voltage between the urine sensor electrodes and applies voltage between the feces sensor electrodes; the switch circuit turns on and off electric wires to the urine sensor electrodes and the feces sensor electrodes; the polarity reversal circuit reverses the polarity of the electric wires to the urine sensor electrodes; the control unit performs: switching between urine detection by the urine sensor electrodes and feces detection by the feces sensor electrodes at prescribed time intervals; reversing the polarity of the electric wires to the urine sensor electrodes at prescribed time intervals; and urine detection according to the result of detection of electric resistance between the urine sensor electrodes and feces detection according to the result of detection of electric resistance between the feces sensor electrodes.