Home Robot Visions from iRobot

iRobot CEO and co-founder Colin Angle told recently in an interview about his company´s plans in the senior home healthcare arena. Angel is facing an elderly care crisis in the next 20 years, because of shortage of care personal. Elderly live longer and will need more help at home such as vacuum cleaning, helping out of bed, getting dressed, getting to the bathroom. Angle talks about a "robot buddy" that he can call and activate to drive around in his mothers home to make sure that his mother is OK. Instead of sensor based home surveillance he proposes a mobile platform for on-demand virtual visits and social interaction via videoconferencing.

Angel´s view is that the development of the technology platform has to be funded by government agencies before companies can start industrializing for low-cost production and mass marketing via retail and online.

A market boost may be the US the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act (CLASS), which is a mechanism to reimburse people staying at home for technology and services that allow them to stay at home. This will create a great economic opportunity for companies that can deliver cost-effective solutions for independent living.

Angel´s vision of a telepresence robot is not new. Already in 2007 iRobot had launched ConnectR a telepresence robot but it was not practical enough to meet user expectations. Meanwhile competing telepresence systems have established on the market as reported here before but if they will succeed in the long run is an open question. Many technical, legal and ethical issues have to be considered before mobile videorobots can enter elderly´s homes.

Angel´s vision of a robot buddy isn´t new either. Joe Engelberger, the father of robotics, considered in Discovermagazine, March 2000 "a household robot to be an appliance--one that cooks and cleans, offers an arm, handles security, fetches and carries, does my bidding in response to natural language, and carries out the kind of a conversation that an 85-year-old person does. We can do that right now."

10 years after Engelbergers over-optimistic statement the step from a mobile telepresence robot to an intelligent home buddy that can do real homework is still huge. Despite great research efforts, technological advances and promising prototypes it seems that it will take many years, before household robots can help elderly to stay independent.

€ 3 Million for European Care Robot

A 10 partner consortium coordinated by the Manufacturing Engineering Centre (MEC), Cardiff University, UK will start a R&D project to develop a remotely-controlled, semi-autonomous robotic solutions in domestic environments to support elderly people. In particular, the project will demonstrate an innovative, practical and efficient system called “SRS robot” for personalised home care.

The care robot wil be designed to act as a "shadow" of its controller. For example, elderly parents can have a robot as a shadow of their children or carers. In this case, adult children or carers can help them remotely and physically with tasks such as getting up or going to bed, doing the laundry and setting up ICT equipment etc. as if the children or carers were resident in the house.

This objective will be realised by the following SRS innovations:

A new intent-based remote control mechanism to enable the robots to be tele-operated over a real-world communication network robustly.

An adaptive autonomy mechanism to enable a highly efficient task execution for remotely controlled service robots.

A new robotic self-learning mechanism to enable the robots to learn from their experience.

A safety-oriented framework derived through extensive usability and user acceptance studies that enable service robots to be effectively deployed into home care applications.

The prototypes created in this project will be tested at the “S.Maria Nascente” Centre in Milano and the IZA Care Center in San Sebastián. The final solution will be further developed by Hewlett-Packard and other industrial partners of the consortium for a worldwide market with significant potential and volume.

The € 3 Million research project is supported by EC funding from the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The project comprises partners from Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK.

Home Evaluation Trial for Care Robot

According to a report from Georgia Institute of Techology older adults reported more willingness than younger adults in having a robot perform critical tasks in their home.

The results suggest that both younger and older individuals are more interested in the benefits that a robot can provide than in their interactive abilities. The responses of 117 older adults (aged 65-86) and 60 younger adults (aged 18-25) were analyzed. The results indicated that respondents of both groups were more willing to have robots perform infrequent, albeit important, tasks that required little interaction with the human compared to service-type tasks with more required interaction; they were least willing to have a robot perform non-critical tasks requiring extensive interaction between robot and human.

U.S. company GeckoSystems Intl. Corp has recently announced that they are starting limited in home evaluation trials for their first product, a personal companion home care robot, the CareBot(TM). The company claims to be "the first mobile robot developer in the world to begin actual in-home eldercare evaluation trials".

The primary market for this product is the family for use in eldercare, care for the chronically ill, and childcare. The primary distribution channel for this new home appliance is the thousands of independent personal computer retailers in the U.S. The manufacturing infrastructure for this new product category of mobile service robots is essentially the same as the personal computer industry. Several outside contract manufacturers have been identified and qualified their ability to produce up to 1,000 CareBots per month within four to six months.

Care Robot Market China - Wishfull Thinking?

US service robot manufacturer Gecko Systems is looking East and has identified two atractive market segments for service robots in China: the new Chinese millionairs who are purchasing the latest high-tech gadgets for fun and entertainment and the 20+ miljon elderly with family care needs. It is expected that in the next 5-10 years the Chinese market for family care robots will grow rapidly into a multi-billion dollar market.

Applications the company hopes can attract the Chinese market are cost effective monitoring of the elderly. One of the main reasons for adult children to purchase an elder care robot are concern for their parents living health and quality of life when staying a home alone. Virtual visits, automatic reminders, companionship and automatic emergency notification are some applications that a care robot can offer for elderly and their care givers.



Some ideas what Chinese elderly are thinking about these new gadgets?

Care-providing robot FRIEND

Researchers of the AMaRob project will present the latest results regarding the new care-providing robot FRIEND - developed at the Institute of Automation (IAT) at the University of Bremen, Germany- at the REHACARE, an international trade fair and congress for rehabilitation, care, prevention and integration. REHACARE will take place from October 14th until October 17th, 2009 in the exhibition centre of Düsseldorf, Germany.

FRIEND is a care-providing robot built from commercially available, reliable industrial components. FRIEND is a construction set of adapted components.

Available Components: Wheelchair based on Nemo-platform, 7 DOF-lightweight robot arm, mounted on automated pan-unit, Prosthetic hand –“SensorHand Speed”– with force and slip sensor, Force torque sensor, wrist mounted, Intelligent tray for position and weight, measurement, Energy-management, Pan-tilt-unit for stereo camera systems and 3D-cameras, 10”-TFT-touch screen, mounted on
automated pan-unit, Command unit(s) – adapted to the impairment of the user, Chin joystick, Speech control, Eye control, Hand joystick, Brain-computer interface, IR/Wireless environmental control unit, e.g. for control of doors, High-end PC-unit.