PFI-TT: Affordable Daily Activity Assistive Robots for Individualized Elderly Care in Community Based Long-term Care Centers

这一PFI项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力解决了老年人口不断增长以及出生率低的医疗危机，在出生率低的情况下，老年人的数量增长超过了照顾他们的劳动适龄成年人的数量。由于护理选择的稀缺，机器人是帮助老年人完成通常由照顾者完成的小任务的受欢迎的解决方案。据估计，这些机器人将为全国1.7万家养老机构提供服务。机器人将能够识别老年人并对他们的帮助进行个性化，同时监测健康参数。重要的是，这项工作将旨在了解一个能够帮助日常生活中的简单活动的机器人应该如何在社区长期护理环境中帮助老年人，包括接受和愿意接受机器人的帮助。拟议的项目涉及三个研究领域：1)老年人机器人设计：我们如何为养老社区开发一个有用的、负担得起的机器人系统？在提供帮助的机器人中，老年护理社区对人形机器人的偏好比对非人形机器人的偏好是什么？2)老年人的机器人行为：老年人对一个能够识别个人、叫出他们的名字并提供服务的自主机器人会有什么反应？不同的设计会对交互的形状因素、动作、表现力和交互方式产生什么影响？3)老年人的机器人健康跟踪：随着与机器人的交互发生在社交环境中，机器人可以记录机器人的送水请求、老年人行走的距离等数据。可以获得哪些影响数据质量的因素？这些数据对临床医生有多大帮助？这些问题的答案将是利用NSF资助的项目开发的各种技术制造一个低成本的机器人，然后在老年护理设施中通过测试来验证性能。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this PFI project addresses the healthcare crisis of the growing elderly population coupled with low birth rates where the number of older adults is outgrowing the number of working-age adults to care for them. With the scarcity of care options available, robots are a welcome solution for assisting elders with small tasks that would normally be done by a caregiver. These robots would serve in an estimated 17,000 elder care facilities nationwide. Robots will be able to identify elders and personalize their assistance while monitoring health parameters. Critically, this work will aim to understand how a robot capable of assistance in simple activities of daily living should behave to aid elders in a community long term care setting including the acceptance and willingness to receive assistance from the robot.The proposed project addresses three research areas: 1) Robot Design for Elderly: How can we develop a useful affordable robot system for the elder-care community? What is the elder-care community preference for humanoid robot forms over non-humanoid in a robot that provides assistance? 2) Robot Behavior for Elderly: How will the elderly react to an autonomous robot that can recognize individuals, call them by name and provide services? What effects will different designs have on the interaction such as form-factor, motions, expressiveness and modalities of interaction? 3) Robotic Health Tracking of Elderly: As interactions with the robot occur in social settings, the robot can log data such as requests for water delivery from the robot, distance walked by the elders etc. What factors affect the quality of data can be obtained and how useful will this data be to clinicians? These questions will be answered by building a low cost robot using a variety of technologies developed from NSF-funded programs, then validating the performance with tests in an elder-care facility.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.