PFI:BIC: Affordable and Mobile Assistive Robots for Elderly Care

这个创新伙伴关系项目开发和测试服务机器人的使用，以监测和改善老年人的健康状况。日益增长的老年人口加上发达国家的低出生率正在造成医疗保健危机。老年人的数量正在超过能够照顾他们的工作年龄成年人的数量。仅在美国，从2000年到2030年，65岁以上的老年人数量预计将翻一番，达到7150万人。由于护理选择的稀缺，价格合理的机器人是一个受欢迎的解决方案，可以帮助老年人完成通常由护理人员完成的小任务。该系统在帮助老年人进行日常生活活动的同时，也在了解老年人。然后它可以做一些事情，比如帮助确保他们吃得或喝得健康。该项目包括两个主要部分：开发一种低成本的移动机械手，能够完成一组有限的与老年人相关的操作任务（例如，捡起掉落的物品或装满水杯）；开发一个数据驱动的服务系统，分析机器人的长期使用情况，通过服务请求监测老年人的健康状况，并在需要时主动提供帮助。使该系统可行的一个关键是保持低成本的有效性。这项工作建立在萨维奥克正在开发的一个商业低成本移动机器人平台上，并通过宾夕法尼亚大学正在开发的一种新型低成本扩展棱镜关节臂增加了操纵能力。这种移动机械手机器人将被用来执行服务任务，比如给老人送水。这些机器人收集的数据以及老年人在现场使用它们的方式将为机器人如何帮助创建一个更大的数据驱动的健康监测系统提供信息。项目开始时的合作伙伴包括宾夕法尼亚大学工程与应用科学学院、医学院（宾夕法尼亚州费城）和Savioke（加利福尼亚州森尼维尔市一家小型企业），以及更广泛的合作伙伴“LIFE”——老年人独立生活（宾夕法尼亚州费城，一家非营利组织）。

This Partnership For Innovation project develops and tests the use of service robots to monitor and improve health of the elderly. The growing elderly population coupled with low birth rates in the developed world is creating a crisis in healthcare. The number of senior citizens is outgrowing the number of working-age adults to care for them. In the U.S. alone, the number of seniors over age 65 is projected to double from year 2000 to 2030, reaching 71.5 million. With the scarcity of care options available, affordable robots are a welcome solution for assisting elders with small tasks that would normally be done by a caregiver. While helping elders with activities of daily living in an elder care facility, the system learns about them. It can then do things such as help ensure that they are eating or drinking healthily.The project consists of two main parts: development of a low-cost mobile manipulator capable of a limited set of elder-relevant manipulation tasks (e.g., picking up dropped items or filling a water glass); and development of a data-driven service system that analyzes the use of the robot over time to monitor elder health via service requests and pro-actively offer assistance as needed. One key to making this system viable is maintaining effectiveness at low cost. This work builds on a commercial low-cost mobile robot platform being developed at Savioke and adds manipulation capabilities via a novel low-cost expanding prismatic joint arm under development at the University of Pennsylvania. This mobile manipulator robot will be used to perform service tasks, such as delivering water to elders. The data gathered by these robots and how elders use them in the field will provide information about how robots can help create a larger data-driven health monitoring system.The partners at the inception of the project include University of Pennsylvania, both the School of Engineering and Applied Science as well as the School of Medicine (Philadelphia, PA) and Savioke (Sunnyvale, CA, a small business concern) along with broader context partner, "LIFE"--Living Independently For Elders (Philadelphia, PA, a non-profit organization).