Ambient Assisted Robotics in Europe

By 2050 37% of the EU population will be over 60 years of age and it is expected that there will be fewer than two persons of working age per older person of 65 or older. This will lead to both an increasing demand for care and a shortage of care givers. Older persons need support due to their declining capabilities but also to age related illnesses. 

Several studies and roadmaps predict that robotics will play an important role as assisting and rehabilitation technology, supporting professional and home care. Robotics can add value to health care and care of elderly i.e. by reduction in labour costs, increasing independence and social participation, increasing the quality of care and performing activities that can not be performed by humans. 

Some ongoing projects related to Ambient Assisted Living and Assistive Robotics are listed below. If you are missing any project, please contact Robotland. 

KSERA - Knowledgeable SErvice Robots for Aging

The KSERA project is aimed to develop a socially assistive robot that helps elderly people, especially those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), with their daily activities, care needs and self-management of their disease. KSERA is cooperating with two other projects: eHome and RoboEarth. 

AAL - eHome
The Austrian project AAL- eHOME focus on the development of an assistive home environment for elderly persons, covering fall recognition and prevention, activity monitoring and social integration of elderly persons and their carers. The KSERA intelligent home environment will include expertise from the eHOME project such as wearable and distributed approaches for fall prevention and recognition.

ROBOEARTH -  Robots sharing a knowledge base for world modelling and learning actions

The EU funded FP7 project RoboEarth will develop a World Wide Web for robots including nurse-bots and socially assistive robots (SAR). The robots use the World Wide Web to store and retrieve learned tasks and actions. This enables robots to learn form each other and apply it in their own setting. KSERA and RoboEarth partners share their knowledge and investigate how the KSERA project can contribute to the World Wide Web for robot assistants for the aging population.

FLORENCE -  Multi Purpose Mobile Robot for Ambient Assisted Living

Florence is a sister project in the EU's FP7 objective ICT-2009.7.1. ICT & Aging: service robotics for aging well. The project is based on a multipupurpose mobile robot platform and will pioneer the use of robots in delivering new kinds of AAL services to elderly persons and their caretakers. The main objective of Florence is to make this concept acceptable for the users and cost effective for the society and care givers.

ROBO M.D. - Home care robot for monitoring and detection of critical situations

In the INTERREG-IVC project ROBO M.D. develop a home care robot which monitors and detects critical situations which need prompt medical attention for older persons or people with cardiovascular diseases.

ALIAS - Adaptable Ambient LIving ASsistant

The objective of the ALIAS project is development of a mobile robot system that interacts with elderly users, monitors and provides cognitive assistance in daily life, and promotes social inclusion by creating connections to people and events in the wider world. The system is designed for people living alone at home or in care facilities such as nursing or elderly care homes.

ALIZ-E - Adaptive Strategies for Sustainable Long-Term Social Interaction

The goal of ALIZ-E is to develop methods for developing and testing interactive, mobile robots which will be able to interact with human users over extended periods of time, i.e. a possibly non-continuous succession of interactions which can refer back to, and build forth on, previous experiences.To achieve this aim, ALIZ-E will address three related issues in developing interactive robots capable of self-sustaining medium- to long-term autonomous operation in real-world indoor environments. 

COMPANIONABLE - Integrated Cognitive Assistive & Domotic Companion Robotic Systems for Ability & Security

CompanionAble will provide the synergy of Robotics and Ambient Intelligence technologies and their semantic integration to provide for a care-giver's assistive environment. This will support the cognitive stimulation and therapy management of the care-recipient. This is mediated by a robotic companion (mobile facilitation) working collaboratively with a smart home environment (stationary facilitation). 

EXCITE - Enabling SoCial Interaction Through Embodiment

The primary objective of the ExCITE project is to evaluate user requirements for social interaction via robotic telepresence, and develop insight around the usability and acceptance of this technology. The project is focused on user experience in native settings that accurately represent relevant factors, including user profile, user attitude, home environment, network and the robotic technology itself. A prototype system called the Giraff is used. The Giraff is a remotely controlled mobile, human-height physical avatar integrated with a videoconferencing system. 

€ 13,9 Million for Open Ambient Assisted Living Platform

As the European population ages, more support is needed with fewer hands to cater for their needs. There is a huge market potential for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions, but adoption is limited because they require significant resources for implementation. 
universAAL is a FP7 project started in Februari 2010 aiming at creating an open platform and standards which will make it technically feasible and economically viable to develop Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions. The consortium is built of major industrial and research players in the field, including key participants from earlier projects.  EU is supporting the € 13,9 million project with € 10 million. 

Image: GRB/Infonaut

universAAL is one of the major founders of the Ambient Assisted Living Open Association (AALOA). The mission of AALOA is to create a shared open framework for developers, technology and service providers, research institutions and enduser associations to discuss, design, develop, evaluate and standardize a common

service platform in the field of Ambient Assisted Living.

The AALOA Manifesto defines the rationale around which several European projects decided to join their efforts. It is a call for action addressing all the stakeholders working in this area. The association is currently in the incubation stage, where the subscribers to the Manifesto are organized in
two groups: promoters and supporters.

€ 3,87 million for Social Robot Assistant

Europe is investing more research money in "social robotics" convinced that robots can help to face the strong demographic changes in Europe, where more and more elderly people live alone in their homes or in nursing or elderly care homes, with different levels of autonomy.

The latest initiative is a partnership among 20 European states, the European Union and a number of private enterprises that has launched a three-year, Euro 3, 87 million project to make robots capable of serving as adaptable, interactive, and above all safe assistants for elderly people. The research project, known as ALIAS, places special emphasis on maintaining social networks, warding off feelings of loneliness and isolation, and increasing activities that may protect and enhance cognitive capabilities. ALIAS is a project associated with the Cluster of Excellence CoTeSys (Cognition for Technical Systems) and will widen the competencies of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) in the area of social robotics.
Image/Source: TU Munich

€11 Million for a Companion Robot

Researchers from six European countries and 18 reseach institutions are working together to provide the synergy of Robotics and Ambient Intelligence technologies and their semantic integration to provide for a care-giver's assistive environment. The CompanionAble consortium lead by The University of Reading, UK, has 48 months and a budget of €11 million to address the issues of social inclusion and homecare of persons suffering from chronic cognitive disabilities prevalent among the elderly, a rapidly increasing population group. Those people need support of carers and are at risk of social exclusion, yet this problem not well addressed by ICT technology, but would lead to a social and economical pressure for staying at home as long as possible.will

1st Demonstration of the CompanionAble Robot will be helt at the Conference Marking the European Day of People with Disabilities from the 3rd to 4th December in Brussels.

€ 2 Million for Domestic Robots

French robot manufacturer ROBOSOFT is coordinating a three year € 2 Million EU-project with 8 partners from France, Austria and Hungaria to find out, evaluate and demonstrate the relevance and efficiency of an evolutionary integration robotics platform. The consortium will study the needs in robotics, sensors and 24/7 communication services for the elderly and the deployment of the proposed system in realistic environments. Overall project goal: to have products available at the end of the project 2012.

Two robot platforms will be evaluated: RobuMate will be used to evaluate verbal and visual interactions with the user, cognitive and memory assistance, sending video stream for scene analysis in case of emergency alarm, stimulation for doing physical exercises and watching user behaviour.

RobuWalker is a robotic walker for physical interaction with the user assisting the sit-to-stand and walking, supervising, monitoring the heart rate and sending data to processing centre.

DOMEO Companion robot for cognitive and physical stimulation

French Robosoft, is developing and evaluating in real conditions DOMEO, a new companion robotic system that would allow cognitive and physical stimulation. Providing an efficient system to elderly, disabled or simply needing people is very ambitious.

The video below shos how the companion robot can help people in their everyday life, using natural language.

Biorobotic systems and AAL Scenario

The recently published Ambient Assisted Living Roadmap of the European Ambient Assisted Living Innovation Alliance (AALiance) includes an R&D state-of-the-art overview about biorobotic solutions including biorobotics for personal autonomy and for care, cognitive and companion robots, biorobotics for neuro-rehabilitation, exoskeleton-like machines.

I an Assitant Robot Scenario 62 years old electronic technichian José works in the Repairs Office of a company that makes microwave ovens. The company has adopted the AAL approach and equiped his environment with sensors that constantly monitor and recognize the positions of workers, documents and objects. A smart assistant robot has also been adopted for moving objects. José works with a PC and and with mechanical and electrical tools to work on microwave ovens that are sent to him for repair. When a broken oven arrives at the warehouse , a message is sent to José and he calls the smart assistant robot to move the system from the warehouse to his office. The smart assistant robot is able to move safely around in the company space, recognizing the presence of people and avoiding any obstacles in its path. When José finishes his work, he instructs the assistant robot to move the microwave oven from his office to the warehouse in order for it to be sent back to its owners.

Infonaut Trendwatch - Ambient Assisted Living

Many new concepts and solutions have been developed focusing on the living environment and facilities like Smart Homes, Smart Living, Connected Homes, Home Networking, Independent Living and Assistive Living. New services like E-Health, E-Care and Telecare are under development and the results are promising even when learning curves and investments are still high.

The concept of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), launched in 2006 by the EU as part of its “Aging Well in the Information Society” Action Plan, focuses on aging people and their real needs based on a conceptual framework of ageing in a life course perspective.

AAL is now promoted by the European Union and more than 25 national governments to develop assistive technology that can support elderly people to live longer and better in their homes and to stay in touch with their families, friends and caregivers.

The AAL Joint Programme is initially a six-year funding programme (2008 – 2013), with a planned total budget of about 700m €, of which 50% is public funding and 50% private funding from the participating organizations. The public funding consists of contributions from the AAL partner states (approx. 210m €) and from the European Community (max. 150m €) for the duration of the AAL Joint Programme.

Infonaut has recently started to watch facts, trends and business opportunities in Ambient Assited Living. For more information please visit Infonauts AAL-blog or contact Infonaut.