Care Robots Research Articles

Redrawing the Healthcare Landscape the Facets of AI and Robotics

Health care AI and Robotics are widely popular and is being encouraged for different types of medical application which is an exploration of a new technique from the traditional method. Healthcare RI and Robotics are the functions of minimal invasive operations, and supports other operations medicalcare applications. Healthcare AI and Robotics are well established and protected by the local laws and Governments which paves the way for medical tourism earning considerable Forex for those countries which include India. The application of healthcare AI and Robotics are comparatively cost effective, reduces the time and suffering and effective application results in profitability and ROI. Healthcare AI and Robotics have certain issues and drawbacks which can be eliminated through laws and legislations to give way for its growth and development.

DIH-HERO: Digital Innovation Hubs in Health Care Robotics.

DIH-HERO: Digital Innovation Hubs in Health Care Robotics.

Towards Ethical Guidelines of Using Telepresence Robots in Residential Care

Robotic telepresence is a potential technology to help alleviating the loneliness of elderly people. The impacts of long-term use of telepresence robots in residential care are not well known. We were interested in how using a telepresence robot influences the resident, family members and care workers at a facility, and what challenges and solutions there are for wider adoption of such robots in residential care. With a telepresence robot Double, we arranged a series of three trials in two separate residential care facilities: one 12-week trial in a private facility and two successive 6-week trials in a public facility. In each trial, we installed the telepresence robot in a room of a long-term care home resident for communicating with her/his family members. Based on the results, telepresence robots do increase presence and possibly engagement of family members in residential care, but privacy is a central concern. The mobility of a telepresence robot is hard to utilize in residential care, and to be able to do so, ethical consideration and guidelines are needed. We provide a draft of such ethical guidelines.

Two-Year Use of Care Robot Zora in Dutch Nursing Homes: An Evaluation Study.

The use of the Zora robot was monitored and evaluated in 14 nursing care organizations (15 locations). The Zora robot, a Não robot with software, is designed as a social robot and used for pleasure and entertainment or to stimulate the physical activities of clients in residential care. In the first year, the aim was to monitor and evaluate how the care robot is used in daily practice. In the second year, the focus was on evaluating whether the use of Zora by care professionals can be extended to more groups and other type of clients. Interviews, questionnaires and observations were used as instruments to reveal the progress in the use of the robot and to reveal the facilitators and barriers. Care professionals experienced several barriers in the use of the robot (e.g., start-up time and software failures). The opportunity they had to discuss their experience during project team meetings was seen as a facilitator in the project. Furthermore, they mentioned that the Zora robot had a positive influence on clients as it created added value for the care professionals in having fun at work.

Overcoming carer shortages with care robots: Dynamic value trade-offs in run-time

A rising elderly population and diminishing number of family and professional carers has led to calls for the intervention of care robots. This leaves the quality of robot-delivered care to be determined by designers, for profit companies, nursing codes of practice and conduct, potential user sample groups, etc. What is missing is the carer who consciously makes good ethical decisions during practice. Good care is ‘determinative in practice’. That is, a carer can make good decisions because they are making them within the carer-patient relationship. If a robot is to be capable of good care ethics on the same level as humans, it needs to be conscious and able to make dynamic decisions in practice. Moreover, a care robot must conduct patient interactions in appropriate ways, tailored to the person in its care, at run-time. This is because good care, as well as being determinative in practice, is tailored to the individual. The introduction of robotic care determined by limited stakeholders leaves customised care in danger and instead could potentially turn the quality of elderly care into ‘elderly management’. This study introduces a new care robot framework—the attentive framework—which suggests using care centred value sensitive design (CCVSD) for the design process, as well as a computationally conscious information system (IS) to make practice-determinative decisions in run-time with extrinsic care value ordering. Although VSD has been extensively researched in the IS literature, CCVSD has not. The results of this study suggest that this new care robot framework, which is inspired by CCVSD, is competent in determining good, customised patient care at run-time. The contribution of this study is in its exploration of end-user willingness to trust known AI decisions and unwillingness to trust unknown AI decisions. Moreover, this study signifies the importance of, and desire for, good, customised robot-delivered care.

“Robots do not replace a nurse with a beating heart”

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the publicity around the implementation of the Zora robot in elderly-care services in Lahti, Finland. The aim is to discover opinions concerning the use of robots in elderly care as well as the arguments and justifications behind those opinions. Zora is a humanoid robot intended to promote mobility and rehabilitation. The Lahti pilot was the first Zora pilot in Finland in public elderly-care services. It received much publicity, both regionally and nationally. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on an empirical case study on the implementation of the Zora robot in elderly-care services. The data consist of interviews with personnel who operated Zora and comments from the general public about the “Zora” robot. Two data sources were used: 107 comments were collected from online and print media, and the personnel (n=39) who worked with Zora were interviewed. The data were analysed by means of interpretative content analysis. Findings The results show that public opinion is mainly negative, but that the commentators apparently have little information about the robot and its tasks. The personnel had more positive views; they saw it as a recreational tool, not as a replacement for their own roles. Originality/value There is clearly a need for more information, for a better informed discussion on how robots can be used in elderly care and how to involve the general public in this discussion in a constructive way.

Robotics in elderly care

Robotics in elderly care

Design and implementation of a baby care robot

Design and implementation of a baby care robot

Robotics in Social Care

Among developed economies the problems associated with an ageing population are growing. Can robotics and autonomous systems help to ensure that the elderly have both active and fulfilling lives?

Development of safety technology for rise assisting robot “Resyone Plus”

Human safety is essential for nursing care robots, which have codependent relationships with human. The international safety standard for personal care robots (ISO 13482) is the key to human safety. In this standard, protective measures for risk reduction, which are implemented using the control system, has to be developed based on functional safety standard. A lot of time is needed to do that. Initial investment for developing nursing care robots has to be held down because they are generally low-volume production and it is difficult to recover the investment. In addition, users demand low-cost products. Therefore, it is very important to achieve the functional safety suitable for "low-volume production" and "low cost product", which are required for nursing care robot. Under such circumstances, we developed the rise assisting robot “Resyone Plus”, based on such a concept of functional safety, which can realize "low-volume production" and "low cost product". And we acquired the certification of ISO 13482 about this robot and realized its commercialization. This paper reports a concrete example of how to develop it.

Study on the feasibility of modelling notations for integrated Product-Service Systems Engineering

Developing products and services concurrently bears great potential as well as challenges. Systems Engineering (SE) is an interdisciplinary approach, which aims to enable the realization of successful systems. Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is a SE approach focusing on the utilization of models for information exchange instead of documents. Methods and tools for MBSE are advanced and effective. Nevertheless, the field predominantly focuses on technical systems rather than on services and business models. In the context of the increasing importance of the Service Economy and rising innovative business models, an extension of the MBSE methods and tools to a service- and business model-centric view constitutes a research gap. Sufficient methods for requirements definition in PSS design have been developed. In concept design, the outline or rough concept of the product is defined. This step is currently not supported with useful methods. In order to address this research gap, the authors have proposed Integrated Product Service Architectures (IPSSAs) in previous research, which depict physical product architectures and service architectures in one integrated model. In previous studies, Systems Modelling Language (SysML) was identified as suitable modelling notations for IPSSAs, but several drawbacks of the notation were noted. Within this paper, a study is presented, which identifies suitable combinations of modelling notations and diagrams for IPSSA modelling. The combination of several diagrams from SysML, Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) and Data Flow Architecture is used on the practical example of ELSA (Engineering Living Systems of Autonomy), a service robot for guest and plant care. In order to address the lack of process-based service modelling in SysML, BPMN is added to common SysML modelling. In order address the data flow dimension, a third modelling notation, the Data Flow Architecture is proposed.

Case Study on Human-Robot Interaction of the Remote-Controlled Service Robot for Elderly and Disabled Care

The tendency of continuous aging of the population and the increasing number of people with mobility difficulties leads to increased research in the field of Assistive Service Robotics. These robots can help with daily life tasks such as reminding to take medications, serving food and drinks, controlling home appliances and even monitoring health status. When talking about assisting people in their homes, it should be noted that they will, most of the time, have to communicate with the robot themselves and be able to manage it so that they can get the most out of the robot's services. This research is focused on different methods of remote control of a mobile robot equipped with robotic manipulator. The research investigates in detail methods based on control via gestures, voice commands, and web-based graphical user interface. The capabilities of these methods for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) have been explored in terms of usability. In this paper, we introduce a new version of the robot Robco 19, new leap motion sensor control of the robot and a new multi-channel control system. The paper presents methodology for performing the HRI experiments from human perception and summarizes the results in applications of the investigated remote control methods in real life scenarios.

Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Machines: Influences, Consequences, and Dilemmas in Human Care

In the field of robotics and in the health sciences, transitions have been occurring in the control of robots operating with predetermined logic and rules. Robotics in health care are influencing human caring dynamics in many ways such as enhancing dependency and surrender to machine technologies. Situations such as these are charged with possibilities of legal liabilities triggered by influences and consequences of advancing robotic technology dependency. The purpose of this paper is to identify, describe, and explain legal issues and/or dilemmas centered on robotics in healthcare while providing engaging opportunities to limit consequent legalities thus forming beneficial human health care outcomes. Laying bare these liabilities will provide critically informative data that can foster proactive encounters which can or may deter health care liabilities while ensuring quality healthcare outcomes. An attempt is made to re-conceptualize how to view agency, causality, liability responsibility, culpability, and autonomy for the new age of autonomous robots. While it is still not clear how this would turn out, a clear framing of the problem is the first step in the project.

Grasping Objects From the Floor in Assistive Robotics: Real World Implications and Lessons Learned

This paper presents a system enabling a mobile robot to autonomously pick-up objects a human is pointing at from the floor. The system does not require object models and is designed to grasp unknown objects. The robot decides by itself if an object is suitable for grasping by considering measures of size, position and the environment suitability. The implementation is built on the second prototype of the home care robot Hobbit, thereby verifying that complex robotic manipulation tasks can be performed with economical hardware. The presented system was already tested in real apartments with elderly people. We highlight this by discussing the additional complexity for complete autonomous behavior in apartments compared with tests in labs.

Desire-Driven Reasoning for Personal Care Robots

In this paper, in order to reduce the burden of caring for individuals who are bedridden, we present a method of reasoning about the objects and actions that could satisfy their physiological needs. First, we introduce a method of representing knowledge about everyday objects in terms of their properties and functions. Based on this representation, we then propose a desire-driven reasoning approach that bridges the gap between physiological desires and robot actions. This can also deal with issues caused by uncontrolled domains, including incomplete knowledge and dynamic environments. Finally, we evaluate the proposed method by applying our newly developed KUT-PCR personal care robot to real household scenarios.

Estimation of soft tissue injury by impact for safety operation of personal care robot

Estimation of soft tissue injury by impact for safety operation of personal care robot

Attitude Toward and Intention to Use Care Robot Technology in Older Adults and Family Members

Attitude Toward and Intention to Use Care Robot Technology in Older Adults and Family Members

A Standard for Safety Management of Personal Care Robots

A Standard for Safety Management of Personal Care Robots

Approach to Development of a Nursing Care Robot at Okinawa Prefectural Council for Needs-Seeds Cooperation on Nursing Care Robots

Approach to Development of a Nursing Care Robot at Okinawa Prefectural Council for Needs-Seeds Cooperation on Nursing Care Robots

Self-efficacy and acceptance of robots

As many post-industrial societies are rapidly ageing, intelligent and innovative solutions from the technology side are sought to ensure that welfare services continue in the future. Both social and nonsocial assistive robots are considered as solutions. To ensure the successful implementation of new technology, it is essential to understand the factors that influence the user's decision to accept or reject technology. The aim of this study was to understand the association between robot use self-efficacy and acceptance of robots. Acceptance of humanoid, pet, lifting, and telepresence robots were studied among care work staff (N = 3800). Analyses were based on linear regression analysis. The results showed that robot use self-efficacy is associated with the acceptance to use humanoid, pet, and telepresence robots. The strongest connection was found between robot use self-efficacy and the functional and social acceptance of a humanoid robot. General self-efficacy was not associated with any of the robot types studied in the final models. Furthermore, no interaction effect was found between general self-efficacy and robot use self-efficacy. The results underline that psychological processes on acceptance of robots vary between different types of robots. The results imply that robot use self-efficacy is important for understanding acceptance and implementation of robots. The explanatory power of self-efficacy is better when it is tied to a specific matter such as the use of care robots.