EAGER: CHS: Collaborative Research: Analyzing Elder Care to Guide the Design of Caregiver Robots

扩大老年人护理的可获得性和降低老年人护理成本的一种方法是增加能够在自己家中独立生活的老年人的数量，这被称为“就地养老”。这是一个有吸引力的选择，因为老年人更喜欢独立生活，并报告他们这样做时更好的健康和生活质量，并且因为就地老龄化可以减少老年人医疗保健费用的增加。然而，就地养老仍然需要护理人员，而护理人员供不应求。扩大老年人护理人员的可用性的一种方法是开发可以在这些家庭中担任护理人员的机器人。研究已经表明，许多老年人对这种可能性持开放态度，特别是如果它允许他们保持独立。此外，许多老年人报告说，在许多任务中，他们实际上更愿意由机器人而不是另一个人来帮助。与人类护理人员一样，机器人护理人员将陷入一个更大的复杂社交网络和技术系统中，而不仅仅是护理人员和被护理者。需要理解这个更大的背景，以便机器人护理人员成功地提供所需的护理，例如如果他们所帮助的人没有遵循他或她的通常行为模式，则知道应该联系谁以及提供什么信息。本项目将通过分析当前老年人家中的看护形式，详细描述当前的老年人护理实践，并将此描述转化为看护机器人的设计建议，探索和描述看护机器人应如何发挥作用。分析将开始，描述当前和未来看护系统的复杂社会技术背景，特别是在人类或机器人护理者的工作功能和工作领域方面。工作职能将独立于谁或什么将执行这些职能进行描述。工作领域将使用各种技术进行分析，如抽象分解空间（ADS）和上下文活动图（ConAD）。ADS将在几个不同的抽象层次上映射家庭的总体目标和物理资源之间的关系，例如将提供安全物理环境的目标映射到可用于协助转移的不同资源。ConAD将不同的工作功能与不同的工作情况联系起来，例如将药物的管理与一天中的适当时间和家中的位置联系起来。基于这些工作功能和工作领域的分析，该项目将起草，完善，并验证正式的设计要求的描述机器人。

One approach to expanding the availability of elder care and reducing elder care costs is to increase the number of elders who can live independently in their own homes which is referred to as "aging in place". This is an attractive option because elders prefer to live independently and report better health and quality of life when they do, and because aging in place can reduce the increasing costs of elder health care. However, aging in place still requires caregivers, and caregivers are in short supply. One approach to expanding the availability of caregivers for elders who are aging in place is to develop robots that can serve as caregivers in these homes. Research already suggests that many elders are open to this possibility, especially if it allows them to retain their independence. Furthermore, many elders report that for many tasks they would actually prefer to be helped by a robot rather than another human. As is the case for human caregivers, robot caregivers will be enmeshed in a larger complex social network and technical system beyond just the caregivers and the person who is being cared for. This larger context will need to be understood in order for robotic caregivers to successfully deliver the care that is needed, such as to know who to contact and with what information if the person that they are assisting is not following his or her usual patterns of behavior. This project will explore and describe how caregiving robots should function by analyzing the current form of caregiving in elders' homes, by creating a detailed account of current elder care practices, and by translating this account into design recommendations for caregiving robots.The analysis will begin by describing the complex socio-technical context of current and future caregiving systems, specifically in terms of the work function and the work domain of the human or robot caregiver. Work function will be described independently of who or what will perform those functions. Work domain will be analyzed using a variety of techniques such as Abstraction-Decomposition Spaces (ADSs) and Contextual Activity Diagrams (ConADs). ADSs will map the relationships between a home's overall objectives and physical resources at several different levels of abstraction, such as by mapping the objective of providing a safe physical environment to different resources that are available to assist with transfers. ConADs will relate different work functions to different work situations, such as by relating the administration of medications to the appropriate time of day and location in the home. Based on these analyses of work function and work domain, the project will draft, refine, and validate formal descriptions of design requirements for caregiving robots.