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

扩大老年人护理和降低老年人护理费用的一种方法是增加能够在自己家中独立生活的老年人的人数，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健康状况和生活质量更好，而且因为就地老龄化可以减少老年人医疗保健日益增加的成本。然而，老龄化仍然需要护理人员，而护理人员供不应求。一种增加老年人护理人员的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，尤其是如果这能让他们保持独立性的话。此外，许多老年人报告说，对于许多任务，他们实际上更愿意由机器人而不是另一个人来帮助。就像人类看护人一样，机器人看护人将被卷入一个更大、更复杂的社会网络和技术系统中，而不仅仅是看护人和被看护人。为了让机器人护理人员成功地提供所需的护理，需要理解这一更大的背景，例如，如果他们所帮助的人没有遵循他或她通常的行为模式，他们需要知道与谁联系以及提供什么信息。该项目将通过分析老年人家中目前的护理形式，创建当前老年人护理实践的详细说明，并将此说明转化为护理机器人的设计建议，来探索和描述护理机器人应该如何发挥作用。分析将从描述当前和未来护理系统的复杂社会技术背景开始，特别是在人类或机器人护理人员的工作功能和工作领域方面。工作功能的描述将独立于谁或什么将执行这些功能。工作领域将使用各种技术进行分析，例如抽象分解空间（ads）和上下文活动图（ConADs）。ads将在几个不同的抽象层次上绘制家庭总体目标与物理资源之间的关系，例如通过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。ConADs将不同的工作功能与不同的工作环境联系起来，例如将药物管理与一天中的适当时间和家中的适当地点联系起来。基于这些工作功能和工作领域的分析，该项目将起草、完善和验证护理机器人设计需求的正式描述。

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.