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

该PFI项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力解决了不断增长的老年人口的医疗保健危机以及低出生率，其中老年人的数量超过了工作年龄成年人的数量来照顾他们。由于缺乏护理选择，机器人是一种受欢迎的解决方案，可以帮助老年人完成通常由护理人员完成的小任务。这些机器人将在全国约17，000个老年护理设施中服务。机器人将能够识别老年人，并在监测健康参数的同时为他们提供个性化的帮助。关键的是，这项工作将旨在了解如何能够在日常生活中的简单活动的援助机器人应该表现出帮助老年人在社区长期护理settings.The拟议的项目地址三个研究领域的接受和愿意接受援助的机器人：1）机器人设计为老年人：我们如何才能开发一个有用的负担得起的机器人系统为老年人护理社区？ 在提供帮助的机器人中，老年人护理社区对人形机器人形式的偏好是什么？ 2)老年人的机器人行为：老年人对能够识别个人、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产生什么样的影响，比如形状因素、动作、表现力和交互方式？3)老年人的机器人健康跟踪：由于在社交环境中与机器人进行交互，机器人可以记录数据，例如机器人的送水请求、老年人行走的距离等。可以获得哪些因素影响数据质量以及这些数据有多大用处这些数据对临床医生有帮助？这些问题将通过使用NSF资助项目开发的各种技术来构建低成本机器人，然后在老年人护理设施中通过测试验证性能来回答。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估而被认为值得支持。

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.