Assistive robots for socialization in elderly people: results pertaining to the needs of the users.

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.

Assistive robots to improve the independent living of older persons: results from a needs study.

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. 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 check-up needs.

Integrative Biomimetics of Autonomous Hexapedal Locomotion.

Despite substantial advances in many different fields of neurorobotics in general, and biomimetic robots in particular, a key challenge is the integration of concepts: to collate and combine research on disparate and conceptually disjunct research areas in the neurosciences and engineering sciences. We claim that the development of suitable robotic integration platforms is of particular relevance to make such integration of concepts work in practice. Here, we provide an example for a hexapod robotic integration platform for autonomous locomotion. In a sequence of six focus sections dealing with aspects of intelligent, embodied motor control in insects and multipedal robots-ranging from compliant actuation, distributed proprioception and control of multiple legs, the formation of internal representations to the use of an internal body model-we introduce the walking robot HECTOR as a research platform for integrative biomimetics of hexapedal locomotion. Owing to its 18 highly sensorized, compliant actuators, light-weight exoskeleton, distributed and expandable hardware architecture, and an appropriate dynamic simulation framework, HECTOR offers many opportunities to integrate research effort across biomimetics research on actuation, sensory-motor feedback, inter-leg coordination, and cognitive abilities such as motion planning and learning of its own body size.

Agile Co-Creation for Robots and Aging (ACCRA) Project: new technological solutions for older people.

INTRODUCTION: Worldwide population is getting older. The older persons want to stay independent and wish to increase their engagement in social activities to tackle loneliness, depression, and isolation. Starting from these assumptions, we developed the ACCRA project (Agile Co-Creation for Robots and Aging) with the aim to enable the development of advanced ICT Robotics-based solutions for extending active and healthy aging in daily life by defining, developing and demonstrating an agile co-creation development process. METHODS: ACCRA robotics solutions will be designed and developed to be tested in three different domains: mobility, daily life, socialization support in four countries (i.e., France, Netherlands, Italy, and Japan). The proposed approach identifies four different phases: (1) needs analysis, (2) agile co-creation, (3) experimentation, and (4) sustainability analysis. Currently, the first two phases were almost completed. For the needs phase, we have used the following recruitment criteria: (1) for mobility: age ≥ 60 years, the and presence of mobility issues assessed by Older Mobility Scale (EMS) with a score > 13; (2) for daily life: age ≥ 60 years, and the presence of difficulties engaging in housework assessed by Autonomie Gérontologie Groupes Iso-Ressources (AGGIR) with a GIR score ≥ 4; (3) for socialization support: age ≥ 60 years, and the absence or mild level of cognitive impairment assessed by Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) with a score ≥ 24. RESULTS: The needs analysis and first co-creation sessions focus attention on the experience of older in the four countries. Preliminary results showed how, in all the pilot sites, many expectations were raised from older, formal and informal caregivers about the application of the technology into their life. Minor concerns existed about privacy, real efficacy and modularity in a real-world environment. Overall, a good attitude was recorded towards the use of technologies to support life and promote independent living. Moreover, the older engaged in our studies showed a great interest to be actively involved in the developing phase of something built based on their needs. CONCLUSIONS: The availability of new solutions to increase independence and quality of life in a sustainable manner appears to be mandatory in the actual society considering the actual socio-economic situation over the industrial countries.