SCH: EXP: Home+, An Intelligent and Interoperable Suite of Robotic Furnishings, Learning and Evolving with Their Users

美国老年人的数量正在大幅增加，医疗保健的费用也在大幅增加。伴随着这些趋势的是越来越缺乏照顾者，护理提供者和护理设施，以照顾我们不断增长的老年人口。支持老年人健康的技术往往仅限于计算机化的监测系统，并且可能在未来的某一天，作为外观和功能与我们相似的辅助“人形”机器人。与此同时，我们的家和他们的许多家具仍然是传统的，低科技的，不适应生活的变化。为了促进独立生活，这个来自建筑设计，机器人和人为因素的研究团队探索了我们的家庭如何配备先进功能的家具。Home+是一系列机器人家居用品，可以轻松融入任何传统家庭，通过实现日常家庭活动来提高行动能力和认知功能受损的个人的生活质量。该研究项目将：（1）确定希望在原地养老的老年人的需求和愿望，确定“家+”概念中最有希望支持独立生活的方面;（2）相应地设计机器人家具;（3）测试这些家具，以确定它们彼此之间以及与使用它们的人之间的互动程度;（4）定义这些家具及其用户互动的编排;以及（5）评估Home+如何支持典型用户执行定义独立生活能力的十项日常家庭任务。该团队不仅将从可能通过家庭+受益最多的目标人群和医疗保健专业人士那里获得见解，还将从更广泛的受众那里获得见解。Home+项目的推广工作将在一个研讨会上达到高潮，该研讨会将寻求市场和实践支持，以推进原型。大多数老年人希望在家中养老。为了实现这一目标，该项目将：（1）对老年人进行需求评估;（2）迭代地共同设计和可用性测试机器人家具，这些家具可以在与人类用户的互动中相互识别，交流，并部分记住对方（3）为这个网络-人类系统定义交互的模式语言;以及（4）通过比较具有和不具有home+的个体在定义独立生活能力的10项常规家庭任务上的表现来评估home+的功效。利用分布式机器人技术的研究和形式主义，该团队将集中精力实现和评估Home+的三个软件环境：（1）集中式架构，所有传感信息，处理，命令和控制都在单一来源;（2）分布式架构，具有本地化的传感，处理和控制，以及元素之间的最小交互;（3）分布式架构，具有本地化的传感，处理和控制。以及（3），前两者的组合，在（1）的高级策略和（2）的反应行为之间具有专用接口层。从智力上讲，这种方法可以被视为在传统机器人技术和智能、机器人增强的物理建筑环境之间建立桥梁。

The number of older persons in the United States is substantially increasing, as is the cost of health care. Accompanying these trends is a growing scarcity of caretakers, care deliverers, and care facilities to attend to our growing elder population. Technology supporting health for older adults tends to be limited to computerized monitoring systems and, potentially someday in the future, as assistive 'humanoid' robots that look and function something like us. Our homes and their many furnishings, meanwhile, remain conventional, low-tech, and maladaptive to life changes. To promote independent living, this research team from architectural design, robotics, and human factors explores how our homes can be outfitted with furnishings of advanced functionality. This project, home+, is a collection of robotic home furnishings that fits easily into any conventional home to increase the quality of life of individuals with impaired mobility and cognitive functioning by enabling routine domestic activities. This research project will: (1) establish the needs and wants of older people wishing to age in place, identifying those aspects of the home+ concept that best promise to support independent living; (2) design robotic furnishings, accordingly; (3) test these furnishing to determine how well they interact with each other and with the people that use them; (4) define the choreography by which these furnishings and their users interact; and (5) evaluate how well home+ supports typical users performing ten routine home tasks that define a capacity for independent living. The team will gain insights not only from the targeted populations and healthcare professions who may benefit most by home+, but also from a wider audience. This outreach aspect of the home+ project will culminate in a workshop that seeks marketplace and practice support for advancing the prototype. The majority of seniors want to age in place in their homes. To realize this goal, this project will: (1) conduct a needs assessment of older adults; (2) iteratively co-design and usability test robotic furnishings that recognize, communicate with, and partly remember each other in interaction with human users (interoperability); (3) define the pattern language of interactions for this cyber-human system; and (4) evaluate the efficacy of home+ by comparing performance on 10 routine home tasks defining a capacity for independent living for individuals with and without home+. Drawing on research and formalism in distributed robotics, the team will focus efforts on implementing and evaluating three software environments for home+: (1) a centralized architecture, with all sensory information, processing, command and control at a single source; (2) a distributed architecture, with localized sensing, processing, and control, and minimal interactions between elements; and (3), a combination of the first two, with a dedicated interface layer between the high-level strategies of (1) and the reactive behaviors of (2). Intellectually, this approach can be viewed as establishing a bridge between traditional robotics and smart, robotically enhanced, physical built environments.