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2023 (English)In: International Journal of Social Robotics, ISSN 1875-4791, E-ISSN 1875-4805, Vol. 15, no 3, p. 517-545Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The integration of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) frameworks with Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) has proven useful for monitoring and assisting older adults in their own home. However, the difficulties associated with long-term deployments in real-world complex environments are still highly under-explored. In this work, we first present the MoveCare system, an unobtrusive platform that, through the integration of a SAR into an AAL framework, aimed to monitor, assist and provide social, cognitive, and physical stimulation in the own houses of elders living alone and at risk of falling into frailty. We then focus on the evaluation and analysis of a long-term pilot campaign of more than 300 weeks of usages. We evaluated the system's acceptability and feasibility through various questionnaires and empirically assessed the impact of the presence of an assistive robot by deploying the system with and without it. Our results provide strong empirical evidence that Socially Assistive Robots integrated with monitoring and stimulation platforms can be successfully used for long-term support to older adults. We describe how the robot's presence significantly incentivised the use of the system, but slightly lowered the system's overall acceptability. Finally, we emphasise that real-world long-term deployment of SARs introduces a significant technical, organisational, and logistical overhead that should not be neglected nor underestimated in the pursuit of long-term robust systems. We hope that the findings and lessons learned from our work can bring value towards future long-term real-world and widespread use of SARs.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer, 2023
Keywords
Ambient Assisted Living, IoT network, Monitoring, Socially assistive robots, Virtual communities
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-97653 (URN)10.1007/s12369-021-00843-0 (DOI)000754927900001 ()35194482 (PubMedID)2-s2.0-85124749539 (Scopus ID)
Note
Funding agency:
European Commission Joint Research Centre ICT-26-2016b-GA 732158
Correction:
DOI: 10.1007/s12369-022-00885-y
WOS: 000857896600001
2022-02-242022-02-242023-12-08Bibliographically approved