The Robots in Elderly Care (original) (raw)
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A multi-perspective evaluation of a service robot for seniors: the voice of different stakeholders
Disability and rehabilitation. Assistive technology, 2017
The potential of service robots for seniors is given increasing attention as the ageing population in Western countries will continue to grow as well as the demand for home care. In order to capture the experience of living with a robot at home, a multi-perspective evaluation was conducted. Older adults (n = 10) were invited to execute an actual interaction scenario with the Care-O-bot(®) robot in a home-like environment and were questioned about their experiences. Additionally, interviews were conducted with the elderly participants, informal carers (n = 7) and professional caregivers (n = 11). Seniors showed to be more keen to accept the robot than their caregivers and relatives. However, the robot in its current form was found to be too limited and participants wished the robot could perform more complex tasks. In order to be acceptable a future robot should execute these complex tasks based on the personal preferences of the user which would require the robot to be flexible and ...
Assistive robots for socialization in elderly people: results pertaining to the needs of the users
Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 2018
Background/aim Technological solutions can support the elderly, improve their quality of life and reduce isolation and loneliness. The Euro-Japan ACCRA (Agile Co-Creation for Robots and Aging) project has the objective of building a reference co-creation methodology for the development of robotic solutions for ageing. The aim of this study is to provide a pilot qualitative analysis of the real needs of elderly people and their caregivers when exposed to conversational activities with robots and to identify priority needs that should be developed from end-user perspectives. Methods A qualitative research design was adopted to define a pre-structured questionnaire that was administered to the elderly taking part in the piloting sessions. Three groups of end-users were included: subjects with an age ≥ 60 years, informal caregivers and formal caregivers. Results The interviews were carried out in Italy and Japan. A total of 17 elderly and 36 caregivers were recruited. Common needs in the two sites were categorized into 3 groups: Communication; Emotion Detection and Safety. General robot acceptance level is good and perception is positive among participants in the pilot sites. Conclusion A positive perception of the elderly on the application of a robotic solution was found and many are the needs that could be addressed by an appropriate and careful robotic development taking into account the real needs and capabilities of the involved subjects.
What Should a Robot do for you?-Evaluating the Needs of the Elderly in the UK
2013
The increasing interest in the use of robotic assistive technologies in elderly care for the UK makes it necessary for roboticists to evaluate the needs, problems and demands of possible end-users of such technologies. Users of these technologies can be divided into three groups: informal caregivers (family members and friends), formal caregivers (medical staff, social workers, homehelp), and the elderly themselves. In this paper we present the results of a series of focus groups conducted between March and May 2012. We used the metaplan method to evaluate the opinions and needs of each of the three different potential user groups mentioned above. In these discussions we extracted a variety of problem dimensions and their interconnections in order to understand in which parts of everyday life assistive technology could help, and is needed the most.
Assistive robots to improve the independent living of older persons: results from a needs study
Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 2019
Background: More than 70% of elderly people age 80 and older are experiencing problems in personal mobility. Assistive robotics can represent a concrete support providing also a support for caregivers, clinicians and nurses by reducing their burden. Methods: A total of 20 older people and 34 caregivers (formal and informal) were interviewed in Italy and the Netherlands to investigate and prioritize their needs concerning the personal mobility domains and their attitudes towards assistive robots. The data were analysed from a user point of view by means of thematic content analysis by underlying recurrent topics. Results: The results revealed four categories of needs from the perspective of the older individuals: instrumental needs, rehabilitation needs, personal safety and indoor activities of daily life. Additionally, the results underline how personal mobility issues influence different aspects of daily life. Complementarily, three categories of caregiver needs were also distinguished: instrumental needs, rehabilitation monitoring needs and checkup needs. The highest percentage of participants showed a positive expectation towards assistive robotics. Conclusions: The results were clustered according to the robot abilities (i.e., motion, interaction, manipulation, decision support and perception abilities) as a list of functional and technical requirements that should be developed to address all the needs related to the personal mobility. Robotic developer teams that work in this context could take advantage of this research. Additionally, this work can be used as a basis for clinicians and nurses working in geriatric units to understand how the robots can support and enhance their work. ä IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION The incidence of personal mobility limitations affects 35% of adults age 70 and older and 72% of people over 80 years of age. Assistive robots can support elderly people during daily tasks: they could promote their personal mobility acting as a supporting tool. The results of the needs analysis revealed four categories of needs from the perspective of the older individuals: instrumental needs, rehabilitation needs, personal safety, and indoor activities of daily life. Three categories of caregiver needs were also distinguished: instrumental needs, rehabilitation monitoring needs, and checkup needs.
Robots with and for the Elderly People – Case Study Based on Action Research
ICERI2017 Proceedings, 2017
There are lot of challenges how to tackle the questions of ageing society and ageing population in European countries. The demand is to develop new digital health and wellbeing services using technology and robots for elderly people to promote elderly people´s health and wellbeing and to support them to cope and live independently at home. Based on earlier studies the main problems of elderly people who are living alone are loneliness, unsafety and difficulties in daily life. The challenge is to response the needs of elderly people. The solutions will be new technologies, robotics and new digital services enhancing and supporting elderly people living at home as long as possible. This article is based on an action research and living lab methodology for developing and studying how to apply robots in elderly care. Action research as the methodological approach is congruent with the living lab methodology especially when the aim is to develop and pilot new activities, methods or interventions for example robots such as service robots, care robots or social robots with users in real life. In this study both elderly people and and health care professionals are in an active role and engaged in the development process of using robots in elderly care. The purpose is to present the findings of case study based on the phases of action research in the context of elderly care. The purpose of this article is to describe the research and development process and cocoreation process how robots and the content for program can be developed and piloted in elderly care. The aim of is to describe a living lab study and design plan for how care robots especially Pepper was piloted in elderly care context. The methodological background is on action research. The data was collected through focus group interviews and demonstrations of the robots before, during and after the pilots. This study is a part of the main research project called Robots and Future of Welfare Services (ROSE) funded by Strategic Research Council, Academy of Finland [1]. The main research project adopts a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to study how advances in robot and perception technologies allow product and service innovation and renewal of welfare services, when such services are developed jointly with users and other stakeholders to respond the needs of the elderly people.
Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 2018
This paper describes the different phases in which information was collected from users within the SRS project, the prioritization procedure used and a list of user requirements for robots supporting frail older users. The SRS project user study revealed high-level requirements related to physical tasks, cognitive and social support and motorization. User requirements for service robots also involved privacy, safety and adaptation issues. A user perspective is necessary in the development of service technologies such as the robotic system proposed. Future research should focus on the implications of the inclusion of robots in the daily lives of frail older people.
Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Healthy and Active Aging, 2016
Fortunately, improvements in welfare and medical care will allow life expectancy in Europe's population to increase by the year 2050. However, it is not always the case that living longer implies a healthier, more active and independent life. In this context, technologies and products that will act as assistive companions to elderly, who are living alone at their home, are attracting a growing interest from both a research and commercial perspective. Literature reports contradictory results on the preferences of elderly towards assistive technologies and more specifically, service robots. In this paper, we are called to present an empirical study, conducted in the scope of an EU-Horizon 2020 project, in order to explore people's perceptions, attitudes and requirements towards the idea of a future service robot for the home.
2018
Background: In Europe, the population of older people is increasing rapidly. Many older people prefer to remain in their homes but living alone could be a risk for their safety. In this context, robotics and other emerging technologies are increasingly proposed as potential solutions to this societal concern. However, one-third of all assistive technologies are abandoned within one year of use because the end users do not accept them. Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the acceptance of the Robot-Era system, which provides robotic services to permit older people to remain in their homes. Methods: Six robotic services were tested by 35 older users. The experiments were conducted in three different environments: private home, condominium, and outdoor sites. The appearance questionnaire was developed to collect the users' first impressions about the Robot-Era system, whereas the acceptance was evaluated through a questionnaire developed ad hoc for Robot-Era. Results: A total of 45 older users were recruited. The people were grouped in two samples of 35 participants, according to their availability. Participants had a positive impression of Robot-Era robots, as reflected by the mean score of 73.04 (SD 11.80) for DORO's (domestic robot) appearance, 76.85 (SD 12.01) for CORO (condominium robot), and 75.93 (SD 11.67) for ORO (outdoor robot). Men gave ORO's appearance an overall score higher than women (P=.02). Moreover, participants younger than 75 years understood more readily the functionalities of Robot-Era robots compared to older people (P=.007 for DORO, P=.001 for CORO, and P=.046 for ORO). For the ad hoc questionnaire, the mean overall score was higher than 80 out of 100 points for all Robot-Era services. Older persons with a high educational level gave Robot-Era services a higher score than those with a low level of education (shopping: P=.04; garbage: P=.047; reminding: P=.04; indoor walking support: P=.006; outdoor walking support: P=.03). A higher score was given by male older adults for shopping (P=.02), indoor walking support (P=.02), and outdoor walking support (P=.03). Conclusions: Based on the feedback given by the end users, the Robot-Era system has the potential to be developed as a socially acceptable and believable provider of robotic services to facilitate older people to live independently in their homes.
How Should a Robot Caregiver for Elderly People Be
2018
During the last few years, due to the aging of the population, many scientists have developed ICT tools to offer elderly people an independent life at home as long as possible. Most of these researchers focused their efforts on problem solving without adequate care to the agreeability and/or the acceptability of these ICT objects for their users. These resulting artifacts will hardly be used in real life by the users for which they have been developed. In this paper, we will present an experiment done on 202 elderly people over 65 on the acceptability and the likeness features a caregiver robot must have. Starting from a classification of 25 different real robot pictures and the associated questionnaire on the quality of seventeen adjectives describing the first and the last robot selected, our work tried to better understand the hidden and implicit motivations that lead to the acceptance or the rejection of a robot and found some interesting results for appealing or unpleasant feat...