Collaborative Research: NRI: Remotely Operated Reconfigurable Walker Robots for Eldercare

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Over 80% of people who have died of COVID-19 in the United States were of age 65 or older, and many of them were nursing home residents and staff, because current in-person eldercare practices caused numerous cluster infection cases in these facilities. The pandemic has also severely impacted visiting nurses, home care, day care, and other in-person eldercare services, and as a result many seniors have been left isolated with little or no interaction with the broader community, which often leads to mental and psychological disorders. Because current nursing practices and systems have proven to be so vulnerable, those in need of such services would be better served if in-person eldercare could be supplemented by other means. This project explores an alternative remote-nursing approach based on tele-medicine and robotic technologies, which aims to deliver quality care services safely in individual homes and institutions through a network of people and equipment.Mobility is a fundamental function that elderly people must retain to live independently, but mobility assistance requires physical interactions and is currently dependent on in-person care. This research will develop a multi-functional, reconfigurable, mobility-assistance robot that is operated and supervised remotely by caregivers and clinical staff who can communicate with the user through the robotic system, the work to include three thrusts: the ability of the robot to alter its footprint when necessary to enable it to fit through narrow doorways and work in cluttered residential environments while providing seamless support in daily activities such as transportation and sit-to-stand transition; the ability to protect a user with declining balance issues from falls that might result in taking a hard hit on a floor by changing to an untippable configuration; and providing remote caregivers with help in executing physical interactions with older adults in a safe and engaging manner, because most physical assistance procedures entail a cooperative attitude from the care recipient. With a remote caregiver in the loop, the robot can monitor the behavior and mental state of the user and guide them through the assistive procedure so that they may be better engaged and become cooperative. Human subject tests will be conducted at a rehabilitation hospital to demonstrate and verify the new technology in a realistic setting.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.