User-defined challenges and desiderata for robotics and autonomous systems in health and social care settings

ABSTRACT

We report the needs and challenges identified by health and social care professionals and service users for robotics and autonomous systems that are of importance to researchers and policymakers. To this end, we held eight workshops in different locations across Cornwall (UK) in which we raised awareness of the applications and opportunities of assistive robots. The 223 participants could interact physically with four robots, watched a multimedia presentation including video and use-case scenarios and then took part in 33 focus groups. Content analysis was carried out based on summaries written by facilitators during the focus groups. The focus groups produced 163 challenges that may have digital solutions including 78 suitable for robotic assistive technology, in three main areas: maintaining independence at home, social isolation, and rurality. Although further research is needed with technology and its implementation, this study shows that health and social care professionals, patients, carers, and students are willing to consider using robotics and autonomous systems in health and social care settings.     

In the hands of machines? The future of aged care

It is remarkable how much robotics research is promoted by appealing to the idea that the only way to deal with a looming demographic crisis is to develop robots to look after older persons. This paper surveys and assesses the claims made on behalf of robots in relation to their capacity to meet the needs of older persons. We consider each of the roles that has been suggested for robots in aged care and attempt to evaluate how successful robots might be in these roles. We do so from the perspective of writers concerned primarily with the quality of aged care, paying particular attention to the social and ethical implications of the introduction of robots, rather than from the perspective of robotics, engineering, or computer science. We emphasis the importance of the social and emotional needs of older persons—which, we argue, robots are incapable of meeting—in almost any task involved in their care. Even if robots were to become capable of filling some service roles in the aged-care sector, economic pressures on the sector would most likely ensure that the result was a decrease in the amount of human contact experienced by older persons being cared for, which itself would be detrimental to their well-being. This means that the prospects for the ethical use of robots in the aged-care sector are far fewer than first appears. More controversially, we believe that it is not only misguided, but actually unethical, to attempt to substitute robot simulacra for genuine social interaction. A subsidiary goal of this paper is to draw attention to the discourse about aged care and robotics and locate it in the context of broader social attitudes towards older persons. We conclude by proposing a deliberative process involving older persons as a test for the ethics of the use of robots in aged care.We dedicate this paper to the memory of Jean Woodroffe, whose strength and courage at the end of her life journey inspired the authors’ interest in aged-care issues.     

Service robot for the elderly

In recent years, service robots have received a lot of attention from both industry and academia. They are individually designed to performtasks in an unstructured environment for working with or assisting humans [1], [2]. Such robots thus have to be able to actively interact with potential users in their surroundings and to appropriately offer their services. Until now, a number of service robots have been introduced such as vacuum cleaning robots, home security robots, entertainment robots, and guide robots [2]?[4]. In particular, robots that are able to assist the elderly are becoming very important with a dramatic increase in the aging population and costs of elderly care [1], [2], [5]. Several projects have been initiated in some developed countries to develop service robots, especially robotic aid systems [2], [5].     

健康服务机器人室内导航视觉传感器研究与开发*

针对健康服务机器人室内导航的应用需求,设计出一种基于STM32F429的嵌入式导航视觉传感器,内嵌500万像素CMOS图像传感器和拥有高性能无线SOC的ESP8266,此次开发的视觉传感器,不是一般的CMOS图像传感器,而是综合了图像感知,图像处理,无线通信,节电唤醒等等功能于一体的智能化微型装置,即眼睛加大脑。经测试,本导航视觉传感器能够以每秒3次的速度向服务机器人发送位置,完全满足室内移动机器人的移动需求。     

A Selective Attention Guided Initiative Semantic Cognition Algorithm for Service Robot

With the development of artificial intelligence and robotics, the study on service robot has made a significant progress in recent years. Service robot is required to perceive users and environment in unstructured domestic environment. Based on the perception, service robot should be capable of understanding the situation and discover service task. So robot can assist humans for home service or health care more accurately and with initiative. Human can focus on the salient things from the mass observation information. Humans are capable of utilizing semantic knowledge to make some plans based on their understanding of the environment. Through intelligent space platform, we are trying to apply this process to service robot. A selective attention guided initiatively semantic cognition algorithm in intelligent space is proposed in this paper. It is specifically designed to provide robots with the cognition needed for performing service tasks. At first, an attention selection model is built based on saliency computing and key area. The area which is highly relevant to service task could be located and referred as focus of attention (FOA). Second, a recognition algorithm for FOA is proposed based on a neural network. Some common objects and user behavior are recognized in this step. At last, a unified semantic knowledge base and corresponding reasoning engine is proposed using recognition result. Related experiments in a real life scenario demonstrated that our approach is able to mimic the recognition process in humans, make robots understand the environment and discover service task based on its own cognition. In this way, service robots can act smarter and achieve better service efficiency in their daily work.     

Enhancing older people’s activity and participation with socially assistive robots: a multicentre quasi-experimental study using the ICF framework*

Socially assistive robots (SARs) are seen as part of a pragmatic solution to addressing the increasing demands, shortage of care workers and to realizing the potential of optimum integrated care. Yet their effectiveness and impact on older people’s care, activities and participation are still unknown. A total of 67 people aged 65 and over participated in a 24-week-long, quasi-experimental study in five residential nursing homes in Japan. The personalized care plan and targets were created based on the framework of the WHO’s International Classification of Function, Disability and Health (ICF). Three types of socially assistive robots were used. The participants in the robot intervention groups showed greater improvements in their scores for targeted activities and participation than the control group. Statistically significant improvements were observed in communication, self care, and social life. SARs have great potential for improving older people’s quality of life. With further research, the use of these robots by older people could be considered as a serious option in the future. In addition, the ICF framework can be utilized further for measuring the effects of introducing SARs on older people’s quality of life.     

Human Robot Engagement and Acceptability in Residential Aged Care

ABSTRACT

People with dementia often suffer the limitation in their ability to communicate and express themselves clearly, consequently spend most of their time alone, and are not engaged in social activity as before. The prolonged lack of engagement has contributed to a variety of negative health effects. The research on engagement and acceptability of people with dementia using assistive technology such as social robots can be useful to provide potential solutions and sustainability. Thus, this article focuses on the service design and the effectiveness of the engagement and acceptability while interacting with a social robot named Matilda being trialed from 2010 until 2013 with 115 participants in Australian residential aged care facilities. Combining the most updated engagement assessment method and the robot acceptance model as the methodology, the findings of this study indicate there is a statistically significant improvement in emotional, visual, and behavioral engagement of older people with social robots over the years. The post-trial survey has also verified their acceptance in the interaction with social robots.     

服务机器人技术研究现状与发展趋势

服务机器人技术经过近30年的发展,在机械、信息、材料、控制、医学等多学科交叉方面取得了重要的成果,本文结合作者在机器人领域的相关工作,在分析国内外关于服务机器人发展研究现状的基础上,就服务机器人目前涉及的仿生材料与结构、自重构机器人、复杂环境下机器人动力学问题、智能认知与感知、网络化交互及微纳系统等关键技术的研究进展做简要的综述,并概要展望了其发展趋势.希望能够在把握国际服务机器人前沿技术发展动态的同时,为培育我国服务机器人产业提供相关理论、方法及技术.     

Personal health care services through digital television

Personal health care has obtained increasing importance in the field of health care as the populations' age in the industrialised countries and resources available for health care remain limited. Personal health care through digital television is an exiting possibility in the realisation of new types of services answering to this demand for increased personal action and responsibility in health care. The possibilities of digital television in health care are studied in the Health Care Television (HCTV) research project of the Digital Media Institute at Tampere University of Technology. In this paper personal health care services are studied mainly from the perspective of the interactive service infrastructure of digital television. Firstly we present the general infrastructure of digital television and the different interactive service types of digital television. The usage of these service types in personal health care applications is also discussed. Finally, a web-based application based on chronic atrial fibrillation and its test use is presented. The application is used as a research platform for personal health care applications in digital television.     

A modular design of Bayesian networks using expert knowledge: Context-aware home service robot

Recently, demand for service robots increases, and, particularly, one for personal service robots, which requires robot intelligence, will be expected to increase more. Accordingly, studies on intelligent robots are spreading all over the world. In this situation, we attempt to realize context-awareness for home robot while previous robot research focused on image processing, control and low-level context recognition. This paper uses probabilistic modeling for service robots to provide users with high-level context-aware services required in home environment, and proposes a systematic modeling approach for modeling a number of Bayesian networks. The proposed approach supplements uncertain sensor input using Bayesian network modeling and enhances the efficiency in modeling and reasoning processes using modular design based on domain knowledge. We verify the proposed method is useful as measuring the performance of context-aware module and conducting subjective test.     

基于QFD与RAHP的餐馆服务机器人 人因工程设计

摘 要：以用户需求为基础,提出一种新型餐馆服务机器人人机系统(HRS)模式,探讨了基 于质量功能展开(QFD)理论的餐馆服务机器人人因工程(HRE)设计方法。运用抽样调查法、问卷 调查法和亲和图法(KJ)获取关于餐馆服务机器人用户需求的层次化模型。引入粗糙层次分析法 (RAHP)计算各需求特征所占权重,以此分析基于 QFD 的餐馆服务机器人 HRE 设计方法中的重 点设计目标。将用户重点需求转化为设计要素,设定功能、外观及人机的详细质量特征,通过 构建质量屋对质量功能展开研究,提出设计方案,最终运用 CATIA 人机分析软件对设计方案进 行可用性评价及验证可行性。研究表明该设计方法及流程可提升餐馆服务机器人的可用性,为 后续设计提供参考。     

On a bio-inspired hybrid pheromone signalling for efficient map exploration of multiple mobile service robots

This paper presents a novel bio-inspired hybrid communication framework that incorporates the repelling behaviour of anti-aphrodisiac pheromones and attractive behaviour of pheromones for efficient map exploration of multiple mobile service robots. The proposed communication framework presents a scheme for robots to efficiently serve large areas of map, while cooperating with each other through proper pheromone deposition. This eliminates the need of explicitly programming each service robot to serve particular areas of the map. The paths taken by robots are represented as nodes across which pheromones are deposited. This reduces the search space for tracking pheromones and reduces data size to be communicated between robots. A novel pheromone deposition model is presented which takes into account the uncertainty in the robot’s position. This eliminates robots to deposit pheromones at wrong places when localization fails. The framework also integrates the pheromone signalling mechanism in landmark-based Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) localization and allows the robots to capture areas or sub-areas of the map, to improve the localization. A scheme to resolve conflicts through local communication is presented. We discuss, through experimental and simulation results, two cases of floor cleaning task, and surveillance task, performed by multiple robots. Results show that the proposed scheme enables multiple service robots to perform cooperative tasks intelligently without any explicit programming.     

面向智能家居/智慧生活的服务机器人技术与系统

随着机器人技术的发展以及服务机器人形态的日益丰富,智能家居/智慧生活逐渐成为一种未来的生活方式。文章探索了智能家居和智慧生活的服务机器人技术与系统,在其众多的关键技术中,重点探讨了面向服务机器人的云端融合技术以及高用户体验度的人-机器人交互技术。并以家庭服务机器人为例,实现了基于微信和语音云的人-机器人交互方式,验证了基于云架构的家庭服务机器人体系结构的可行性。文章所提出的服务机器人技术与系统是智能家居、智慧生活的一种实现方式,为未来形形色色的服务机器人技术方案提供了一些思路。     

Optimal assignment method for mobile assistive robots using matching theory

Artificial Life and Robotics - The aging population and expectations for nursing care robots increased significantly recently. We focused on mobile assistive robots. When various types of robots...     

面向服务机器人的智能环境服务构件开发方法

针对服务机器人应用需要,引入基于构件的开发方法,设计了一种支持和增强服务机器人功能的智能环境服务构件系统.制定了服务构件的基本组成结构与交互模式,实现了机器人的跨平台服务调用,有效解决了资源多样异构性带来的问题.服务构件将资源辅助功能封装成共享服务,借助智能环境通信网络,基于规范的服务接口和说明,提供开放的服务访问和调用.它可以被独立地部署并由第三方任意组合应用.本文分别从辅助资源端和服务机器人客户端出发,详细论述了应用web service(WS)中间件技术开发服务构件和服务调用程序的基本原理,并给出了实验验证.     

Generative Modeling of Autonomous Robots and their Environments using Reservoir Computing

Autonomous mobile robots form an important research topic in the field of robotics due to their near-term applicability in the real world as domestic service robots. These robots must be designed in an efficient way using training sequences. They need to be aware of their position in the environment and also need to create models of it for deliberative planning. These tasks have to be performed using a limited number of sensors with low accuracy, as well as with a restricted amount of computational power. In this contribution we show that the recently emerged paradigm of Reservoir Computing (RC) is very well suited to solve all of the above mentioned problems, namely learning by example, robot localization, map and path generation. Reservoir Computing is a technique which enables a system to learn any time-invariant filter of the input by training a simple linear regressor that acts on the states of a high-dimensional but random dynamic system excited by the inputs. In addition, RC is a simple technique featuring ease of training, and low computational and memory demands.     

Care robots and the future of ICT-mediated elderly care: a response to doom scenarios

The discussion about robots in elderly care is populated by doom scenarios about a totally dehumanized care system in which elderly people are taken care of by machines. Such scenarios are helpful as they attend us to what we think is important with regard to the quality elderly care. However, this article argues that they are misleading in so far as they (1) assume that deception in care is always morally unacceptable, (2) suggest that robots and other information technologies necessarily deceive elderly people by creating a “virtual” world as opposed to a “real” world, (3) assume that elderly people of the future have similar ICT skills and interests as the elderly people of today, and (4) assume a simplistic view of technologies. The article suggests an approach to evaluating care robots and ICT in health care which acknowledges and addresses a number of ethical problems raised by robotic care—for instance disengagement problems—while taking into account that some elderly people may need care that does not treat them as (empirically) autonomous, that many the elderly of the future are likely to be digital natives, and that the task of evaluating technologies in care is more complicated than the discussion of deception suggests.     

服务机器人的研究现状与发展趋势

机器人技术代表一个国家的高科技水平和自动化程度,了解和分析国内外的研究现状和最新进展有助于加快我国服务机器人行业的发展。近年来,清洁机器人和教育机器人在我国已经大规模销售,娱乐机器人和安防机器人市场正在培育和快速发展中,医疗机器人市场处于大规模应用的萌芽状态。为了在这一巨大市场中分一杯羹,在服务机器人领域缩短与发达国家的差距,有必要紧紧抓住服务机器人更高智能化、模块化和网络化的技术发展趋势,围绕实现服务机器人智能化、模块化和网络化的集成技术展开研究。     

Design of a modular assembly of four-footed robots with multiple functions

Modern industries use many types of robots. In addition to general robotic arms, bipedal, tripedal, and quadrupedal robots, which were originally developed as toys, are gradually being used for multiple applications in manufacturing processes. This research begins with establishing the platform for four-footed robots with multiple functions, high sensitivity, and modular assembly and this is how a fundamental model of the industrial robots is constructed. Under additional loads, the four feet of the quadrupedal robot reinforce its carrying ability and reliability compared to bipedal or tripedal robots, which helps it to carry more objects and enhances functionality. Based on different requirements and demands from the manufacturing processes, the highly sensitive four-footed robot provides an expandable interface to add different sensing components. In addition, when combined with a wireless communication module or independent 1.2 GHz radio frequency CCD wireless image transmission system, the user can control the robot remotely and instantly. The design helps the four-footed robot to expand its applications. By assembling and disassembling modules and changing the sensing components, the highly sensitive four-footed robot can be used for different tasks. Moreover, the remote control function of the robot will increase interaction with human beings, so it can become highly become involved in people's lives. The platform of the four-footed robot will become a design reference for the commercialization of different industrial robots, and it will provide the design of industrial robots with more options and useful applications.     

A task‐based and resource‐aware approach to dynamically generate optimal software architecture for intelligent service robots

Intelligent service robots provide various services to users by understanding the context and goals of a user task. In order to provide more reliable services, intelligent service robots need to consider various factors, such as their surrounding environments, users' changing needs, and constrained resources. To handle these factors, most of the intelligent service robots are controlled by a task‐based control system, which generates a task plan that represents a sequence of actions, and executes those actions by invoking the corresponding functions. However, the traditional task‐based control systems lack the consideration of resource factors even though intelligent service robots have limited resources (limited computational power, memory space, and network bandwidth). Moreover, system‐specific concerns such as the relationships among functional modules are not considered during the task generation phase. Without considering both the resource conditions and interdependencies among software modules as a whole, it will be difficult to efficiently manage the functionalities that are essential to provide core services to users. In this paper, we propose a mechanism for intelligent service robots to efficiently use their resources on‐demand by separating system‐specific information from task generation. We have defined a sub‐architecture that corresponds to each action of a task plan, and provides a way of using the limited resources by minimizing redundant software components and maintaining essential components for the current action. To support the optimization of resource consumption, we have developed a two‐phase optimization process, which is composed of the topological and temporal optimization steps. We have conducted an experiment with these mechanisms for an infotainment robot, and simulated the optimization process. Results show that our approach contributed to increase the utilization rate by 20% of the robot resources. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.