Care Robots Research Articles

Lio-A Personal Robot Assistant for Human-Robot Interaction and Care Applications.

Lio is a mobile robot platform with a multi-functional arm explicitly designed for human-robot interaction and personal care assistant tasks. The robot has already been deployed in several health care facilities, where it is functioning autonomously, assisting staff and patients on an everyday basis. Lio is intrinsically safe by having full coverage in soft artificial-leather material as well as collision detection, limited speed and forces. Furthermore, the robot has a compliant motion controller. A combination of visual, audio, laser, ultrasound and mechanical sensors are used for safe navigation and environment understanding. The ROS-enabled setup allows researchers to access raw sensor data as well as have direct control of the robot. The friendly appearance of Lio has resulted in the robot being well accepted by health care staff and patients. Fully autonomous operation is made possible by a flexible decision engine, autonomous navigation and automatic recharging. Combined with time-scheduled task triggers, this allows Lio to operate throughout the day, with a battery life of up to 8 hours and recharging during idle times. A combination of powerful computing units provides enough processing power to deploy artificial intelligence and deep learning-based solutions on-board the robot without the need to send any sensitive data to cloud services, guaranteeing compliance with privacy requirements. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lio was rapidly adjusted to perform additional functionality like disinfection and remote elevated body temperature detection. It complies with ISO13482 - Safety requirements for personal care robots, meaning it can be directly tested and deployed in care facilities.

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Nursing: Ethics of Caring as a Guide to Dividing Tasks Between AI and Humans.

Nurses have traditionally been regarded as clinicians that deliver compassionate, safe, and empathetic health care (Nurses again outpace other professions for honesty & ethics, 2018). Caring is a fundamental characteristic, expectation, and moral obligation of the nursing and caregiving professions (Nursing: Scope and standards of practice, American Nurses Association, Silver Spring, MD, 2015). Along with caring, nurses are expected to undertake ever-expanding duties and complex tasks. In part because of the growing physical, intellectual and emotional demandingness, of nursing as well as technological advances, artificial intelligence (AI) and AI care robots are rapidly changing the healthcare landscape. As technology becomes more advanced, efficient, and economical, opportunities and pressure to introduce AI into nursing care will only increase. In the first part of the article, we review recent and existing applications of AI in nursing and speculate on future use. Second, situate our project within the recent literature on the ethics of nursing and AI. Third, we explore three dominant theories of caring and the two paradigmatic expressions of caring (touch and presence) and conclude that AI-at least for the foreseeable future-is incapable of caring in the sense central to nursing and caregiving ethics. We conclude that for AI to be implemented ethically, it cannot transgress the core values of nursing, usurp aspects of caring that can only meaningfully be carried out by human beings, and it must support, open, or improve opportunities for nurses to provide the uniquely human aspects of care.

Integrating Socially Assistive Robots into Japanese Nursing Care.

This paper presents experiences of integrating assistive robots in Japanese nursing care through semi-structured interviews and site observations at three nursing homes in Japan during the year 2019. The study looked at experiences with the robots Paro, Pepper, and Qoobo. The goal was to investigate and evaluate the current state of using robots within the nursing care context, which involved: firsthand experiences with intended and real users; and response from the elderly, and nursing staff. The qualitative analysis results pointed out user satisfaction, adjusted purpose, therapeutic and entertaining effects. The potentials of using robots to assist in elderly care has been evident. Limitations currently relate to the lack of ways to fully utilize and integrate robots.

Social Robots in Therapy and Care

This work presents a comprehensive overview of social robots in therapy and the healthcare of children, adults, and elderly populations. According to recent evidence in this field, the primary outcomes and limitations are highlighted. This review points out the implications and requirements for the proper deployment of social robots in therapy and healthcare scenarios. Social robots are a current trend that is being studied in different healthcare services. Evidence highlights the potential and favorable results due to the support and assistance provided by social robots. However, some side effects and limitations are still under research. Social robots can play various roles in the area of health and well-being. However, further studies regarding the acceptability and perception are still required. There are challenges to be addressed, such as improvements in the functionality and robustness of these robotic systems.

Integrating Socially Assistive Robots into Japanese Nursing Care.

This paper presents experiences of integrating assistive robots in Japanese nursing care through semi-structured interviews and site observations at three nursing homes in Japan during the spring of 2019. The study looked at experiences with the robots Paro, Pepper, and Qoobo. The goal was to investigate and evaluate the current state of using robots in the nursing care context, firsthand experiences with intended and real use, as well as response from the elderly and nursing staff. The qualitative analysis results pointed out user satisfaction, adjusted purpose, therapeutic and entertaining effects. Potentials of robots to assist in elderly care is advantageous. Limitations currently relate to the lack of ways to fully utilized and integrate robots.

Significant challenges when introducing care robots in Swedish elder care

Introduction Care robots are machines, operating partly or completely autonomously, that are intended to assist older people and their caregivers. Care robots are seen as one part of the solution to the aging population, allowing fewer professional caregivers to provide the necessary assistance and care. Despite the potential benefits, the dissemination of care robots, and welfare technology in general, is limited in Swedish elder care. Purpose To explore the challenges of introducing welfare technology, particularly care robots, in elder care. Materials and methods Twenty-one individual interviews with key actors at the societal level, analysed by thematic analysis. Results The challenges, from the societal actors’ perspectives, were related to; the beliefs in technology, attitudes, ethics, collaboration, and the need for knowledge and skills regarding care robots (individual and group challenges). Challenges of a national character were: national governance, infrastructure, laws and regulations, economics, and procurement (systemic and societal challenges). In addition, the necessary preconditions for successful introduction were revealed as: the utility of the technology, implementation, evaluation and safety, security, and integrity (preconditional challenges). Conclusions The introduction of care robots in elder care services seems to be more challenging than that of welfare technology in general, given the context and prevailing attitudes and preconceptions about robotics. Significant challenges need to be managed, at all levels of the society, before care robots can become an integral part of daily care and assist older people and their caregivers in activities and rehabilitation. IMPLICATION FOR REHABILITATION The challenges described by the societal actors‘, are partly similar to those of the end users’, in terms of attitudes, ethics, knowledge and skills, and collaboration. This consensus should provide a solid foundation for the conceptualization and introduction of care robots in elderly care. The challenges follow the pattern of an ecosystem involving all sections of society, which are intertwined and require consideration before the expected benefits can be realised. A user-centred approach is necessary to support the design, implementation, and usefulness of care robots and their suitability for meeting the real needs of older persons and professional caregivers.

Embedding care robots into society and practice: Socio-technical considerations

Robots are not yet typical in daily use in elder care services, but recent studies suggest that they will soon be mainstream. In this study, we focus on the future of elder care, affected by the emergence of care robotics. We tackle the socio-technical transition—a multi-level change with a re-configuration of social and technological elements of the system—of elder care. The transition in the elder care system and the conditions of the embedding the robots in welfare services and society in three European countries, Germany, Sweden and Finland, are examined. Our qualitative study focuses on current situation in the use of robots in elder care as well as advancing and hindering elements in embedding robots into society and elder care practices. According to the results, there is a shift towards using robots in care, but remarkable inertia exists in both technological development and socio-institutional adaptation. Advancing and hindering elements in transition are both technical and social – and increasingly interrelated, which needs to be considered in management and policy measures to promote successful future transition pathways. The change of attitudes and embedding robots into society is promoted, for instance, by raising relevant knowledge on robots at different levels.

Aus der Not geboren oder sinnvolle Substitution? Chancen und Grenzen des Einsatzes von „Pflegerobotern“ in der stationären Altenpflege aus ethischer Sicht

Abstract This article deals with a differentiated examination of robotics and its evaluation in inpatient geriatric care. It examines the extent to which nursing robots fit into person-centered nursing work and possibly change it significantly. The advantages and new possibilities are shown, but also the dangers and problems from the point of view of different area ethics are pointed out. In the centre of the considerations are residents and employees as a benchmark for the ethical evaluation of robots in geriatric care.

The Past and Future of Care Robots

1．はじめに

Socially Assistive Robots, Older Adults and Research Ethics: The Case for Case-Based Ethics Training

Most studies on socially assistive robots (SARs) in elder care are conducted in care homes and recruit participants with some degree of cognitive impairment. The ethical dimension in these studies thus requires careful attention, suggesting that the researchers involved should be offered specific research ethics training. To meet this need in CARESSES—an international multidisciplinary project that aims to design and evaluate the first culturally competent SAR for the care of older adults—a research ethics training module for the project researchers was developed. The training module is largely based on case-based learning (CBL), a widely recognized approach to learning and instruction that is regarded as highly effective across multiple disciplines. In this paper, we argue that research ethics training should be offered to robotics investigators involved in research on SARs in elder care, and we provide an overview of the ethical issues involved in conducting research with SARs and older adults in care homes. Finally, we show how CBL can be used for research ethics training in this context.

Trust in and Ethical Design of Carebots: The Case for Ethics of Care

The paper has two main objectives: to examine the challenges arising from the use of carebots as well as to discuss how the design of carebots can deal with these challenges. First, it notes that the use of carebots to take care of the physical and mental health of the elderly, children and the disabled as well as to serve as assistive tools and social companions encounter a few main challenges. They relate to the extent of the care robots’ ability to care for humans, potential deception by robot morphology and communications, (over)reliance on or attachment to robots, and the risks of carebot use without informed consent and potential infringements of privacy. Secondly, these challenges impinge upon issues of ethics and trust which are somewhat overlapping in terms of concept and practice. The existing ethical guidelines, standards and regulations are general in nature and lack a central ethical framework and concrete principles applicable to the care contexts. Hence, to deal with these important challenges, it is proposed in the third part of the paper that carebots be designed by taking account of Ethics of Care as the central ethical framework. It argues that the Ethics of Care offer the following advantages: (a) it provides sufficiently concrete principles and embodies values that are sensitive and applicable to the design of carebots and the contexts of caring practices; (b) it coheres with the tenets of Principlism and select ethical theories (utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics); and (c) it is closely associated with the preservation and maintenance of trust.

Robots responding to care needs? A multitasking care robot pursued for 25\xa0years, available products offer simple entertainment and instrumental assistance

Twenty-five years ago, robotics guru Joseph Engelberger had a mission to motivate research teams all over the world to design the ‘Elderly Care Giver’, a multitasking personal robot assistant for everyday care needs in old age. In this article, we discuss how this vision of omnipotent care robots has influenced the design strategies of care robotics, the development of R&D initiatives and ethics research on use of care robots. Despite the expectations of robots revolutionizing care of older people, the role of robots in human care has remained marginal. The value of world trade in service robots, including care robots, is rather small. We argue that the implementation of robots in care is not primarily due to negative user attitudes or ethical problems, but to problems in R&D and manufacturing. The care robots currently available on the market are capable of simple, repetitive tasks or colloquial interaction. Thus far, also research on care robots is mostly conducted using imaginary scenarios or small-scale tests built up for research purposes. To develop useful and affordable robot solutions that are ethically, socially and ecologically sustainable, we suggest that robot initiatives should be evaluated within the framework of care ecosystems. This implies that attention has to be paid to the social, emotional and practical contexts in which care is given and received. Also, the political, economic and ecological realities of organizing care and producing technological commodities have to be acknowledged. It is time to openly discuss the drivers behind care robot initiatives to outline the bigger picture of organizing care under conditions of limited resources.

A Survey of Nurses' Need for Care Robots in Children's Hospitals: Combining Robot-Care, Game-Care, and Edu-Care.

The purpose of this study was to investigate nurses' need for care robots in children's hospitals and to help develop care robots that can be used by combining robot-care, game-care, and edu-care. This study employed a mixed-methods design; 198 nurses were recruited for quantitative research and 12 for qualitative research. The findings were as follows. Robot-care: Participants had an overwhelming preference for robots made of plastic or steel that could easily be washed and sterilized. Game-care: Among nursing procedures, vital sign measurements were the most common actions that could be implemented using game elements. Edu-care: The educational content that participants felt should be presented to child patients and caregivers through care robots included information about hospitalization, discharge, infection control, falls, and pressure ulcer prevention. Qualitative data divided the role of care robots into five subcategories associated with children and one subcategory associated with guardians. The findings of this study are meaningful in that it clarified the needs of nurses in the development of care robots for use in children's hospitals.

Robotization in healthcare: legal perspective

Introduction. The development and application of medical robotics, medical robotic devices, automated technical systems in the field of health care are already quite successful and have great potential. Such large-scale technological changes inevitably actualize the social roles of law, that should properly settle, protect and guide the development of nascent social relations, which until recently occurred everywhere in a kind of regulatory vacuum. Material and methods. The methodological basis of the study included general scientific methods (dialectical, logical, systemic, historical, sociological, statistical) and private scientific methods of legal science (formal-legal, historical-legal and comparative-legal). The empirical basis of the study was Russian and foreign regulatory legal acts and law enforcement practice, as well as legal doctrine. Results. Based on the comparative legal study a legal definition of the medical robots and various options for their classification, among them a special one, including surgical robots, robots used in restorative medicine, rehabilitation of immobilized patients, nursing and care robots, have been developed. Cyborgs are biological organisms containing mechanical or electronic components are allocated to a special group. Legal mechanisms for ensuring security and cybersecurity in this area are highlighted. The necessity of more flexible legal regulation of personal data concerning the health of citizens and medical confidentiality under new technological conditions is justified. Discussion. Legal regulation of the medical robots should be of a staged nature. General norms of sectoral significance can be formulated at later stages. At the moment, it is more rational to direct efforts to determine the legal regime of certain types of created artificial intelligence systems in the healthcare sector. Conclusion. The legal concept of robotics in healthcare should take a significant place in a wide range of scientific studies of the development of new technologies for the benefit, not to the detriment, of a person.

Intelligent Dolls and robots for the treatment of elderly people with dementia

Doll and robot are effective and beneficial non-pharmacological therapies applied in different clinical settings. Doll therapy (DT), principally based in Bowlby's attachment theory, uses an empathy or lifelike baby doll to conduct caring behaviors of it. Robot therapies (RT) use care robots with a friendly attitude and appearance that create emotions and movements that lead to different verbal, motor and emotional reactions. Both DT and RT are person-centred therapies that aim to improve wellbeing of people that suffer from different neurological, psychological and mental health disorders, such as Alzheimer's Disease, autism spectrum disorder, stress or depression, by providing a realistic experience. In this paper, the characteristics of both therapies, their benefits and the possibilities of innovation in the therapeutic field are presented.

New Machine Learning Applications to Accelerate Personalized Medicine in Breast Cancer: Rise of the Support Vector Machines.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, health care robots, and algorithms for clinical decision-making are currently being sought after in diverse fields of clinical medicine and bioengineering. The field of personalized medicine stands to benefit from new technologies so as to harness the omics big data, for example, to individualize and accelerate cancer diagnostics and therapeutics in particular. In this overarching context, breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies worldwide with multiple underlying molecular etiologies and each subtype displaying diverse clinical outcomes. Disease stratification for breast cancer is, therefore, vital to its effective and individualized clinical care. The support vector machine (SVM) is a rising machine learning approach that offers robust classification of high-dimensional big data into small numbers of data points (support vectors), achieving differentiation of subgroups in a short amount of time. Considering the rapid timelines required for both diagnosis and treatment of most aggressive cancers, this new machine learning technique has important clinical and public applications and implications for high-throughput data analysis and contextualization. This expert review describes and examines, first, the SVM models employed to forecast breast cancer subtypes using diverse systems science data, including transcriptomics, epigenetics, proteomics, and radiomics, as well as biological pathway, clinical, pathological, and biochemical data. Then, we compare the performance of the present SVM and other diagnostic and therapeutic prediction models across the data types. We conclude by emphasizing that data integration is a critical bottleneck in systems science, cancer research and development, and health care innovation and that SVM and machine learning approaches offer new solutions and ways forward in biomedical, bioengineering, and clinical applications.

The era of robotics: dexterity for surgery and medical care: narrative review

Robots are man-made machines; created to increase the performance of an action. They are either autonomous or semi-autonomous in the hands of the user. The medical field has evolved and revolutionized over the decades. It is the hour of the robot-assisted medical care to successfully change the clinical scenario of patient care. Employment of robotics in diverse fields of medical care has increased the effectiveness of the treatment and in return the effectiveness of the healthcare professionals. Our aim is to emphasize the advances in robot-assisted procedures over their comparable facets and highlight the unresolved challenges of robotics in medical care for the near future.

Technological Frames and Care Robots in Eldercare

Care robots are often portrayed as an exciting new technology for improving care practices. Whether these robots will be accepted and integrated into care work or not, is likely to be affected by the assumptions, expectations and understandings held by potential end users, such as frontline staff and the people that are cared for. This paper describes how the conceptual framework of technological frames was used to identify the nature of care robots, care robots in use and care robot strategy as shared group level assumptions, expectations and understandings of care robots among care staff and potential care receivers. Focus groups were conducted with 94 participants. These groups consisted of line managers, frontline care staff, older people and students training to become carers. The technological frame of the nature of care robots revealed two complementary components: care robots as a threat to the quality of care, and care robots as substitute for humans and human care, held together by imaginaries of care robots. The technological frame of care robots in use revealed aspects of prospective end-users’ uncertainty of their ability to handle care robots, and their own perceived lack of competence and knowledge about care robots. In addition, the following potential criteria for successful use of care robots were identified: adequate training, incentives for usage (needs and motives), usability, accessibility and finances. The technological frame of care robot strategy was revealed as believed cost savings and staff reduction. The novelty of the results, and their relevance for science and practice, is derived from the theoretical framework which indicates that adoption of care robots will be dependent on how well societies succeed in collectively shaping congruent technological frames among different stakeholders and aligning technological development accordingly.

Global policies on assistive robots for care of the elderly: A scoping review

The elderly are the fastest growing portion of the world population. The majority of elderly want to remain independent as long as possible, with responsibility for their care often falling to family or caregivers. Assistive robots could help maintain independence in the elderly while relieving the burden of care on families and healthcare professionals. This scoping review seeks to examine the type and scope of global policies on the use of robotic technology for care of the elderly in international jurisdictions and to assess how they align with current Canadian policies. This review also seeks to determine current perceptions on the use of robotics in care of the elderly and potential barriers to their use that policy makers could encounter. A comprehensive literature search was conducted for articles related to robotic care of the elderly, perceptions of robotic care of the elderly and related policies, using a global lens. A three-step strategy was used to review and identify articles. The search identified 10 primary and secondary studies and 13 grey literature sources. Studies reported that response to robotic care for the elderly had both positive and negative aspects, and that concerns around privacy and cost were prevalent. Japan and the EU had the most comprehensive policy strategies and proposals. Robotic policy in healthcare is relatively new but will become increasingly important in the coming years. Canada needs to strengthen and anticipate its national policy strategy to ensure it can stay aligned with the fast pace of technological change. Further robust research should continue to explore potential for, and concerns over robotic care.

Verbal guidance for sit-to-stand support system

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based robots have become popular in various fields, thereby increasing the demand for care robots. Such care robots recognize or estimate factors such as human states and then perform actions depending on the estimation results. If the humans cooperating with robots do not understand robot functions well, the task will not be performed appropriately. Additionally, it is possible that the estimation may be incorrect. Robots may make mistakes, and there is a risk that these mistakes may not be understood by humans. In such cases, robots are not useful, and this may hinder the cooperation between humans and robots. There are several ways to deal with this issue including improving estimation and information representation. We can know what is important to design care robots by analyzing the influence of factors including accurate estimation and contents and timing of information representation. We developed a robot for analysis that can support a human during standing, by raising its armrest. The developed robot raises its armrest when the user leans on it. In the nursing-care field, verbal communication is important. Hence, we also adopt a verbal guidance for information representation. Verbal guidance to encourage a user to stand up and countdown timer representations are adopted. Initially, an experiment is conducted to validate the usability of the system that acts according to considerably accurate estimations. The experimental results show that system without verbal guidance causes anxiety to humans and the system becomes not useful, even if the human state is detected accurately. Furthermore, we determine the appropriate content and timing of verbal guidance based on the results. Subsequently, we conduct an experiment to confirm that the proposed method is applicable under imperfect estimations.