Classification of Care Assistive Technology Based on the Relationship Between Users and Technologies

While an aging population in Japan and other countries is resulting in an increased demand for nursing care services, there is a shortage of care workers due to a decrease in the working population. The use of care assistive technologies such as robots, artificial intelligence, and information technology is expected to compensate for this shortage, and many care assistive technologies such as power assist devices and communication robots have been developed. However, their introduction and widespread use in actual service have not progressed. The aim of this study is to address the problem on less technology introduction in nursing care by surveying the attitudes of potential users to care assistive technologies, clarify the factors affecting the use of such technologies, and propose a new design method for the technologies. We surveyed attitudes to the use of care assistive technology from the perspective of function and information utilization for three groups: active seniors, informal carers, and formal carers. The survey was conducted in Japan and Finland, which have high aging populations. Based on the survey results, we proposed, as a design method, a classification of care assistive technologies according to their interaction with users as well as the nursing care process.

Impression Survey and Grounded Theory Analysis of the Development of Medication Support Robots for Patients with Schizophrenia

Medication is a key treatment for patients with schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia tend to easily decrease medication adherence with long-term treatment. However, there is a chronic shortage of specialists who provide medication support, such as visiting nurses. In addition, these patients do not often use smartphones or PCs in their daily lives. Thus, schizophrenic patients need a direct approach in the physical world because they are unfamiliar with cyberspace. This study aims to improve the home treatment environment using robot technology that can approach in the physical world of schizophrenic patients who need medication support. In this study, collaboration between psychiatric nursing specialists and medical engineers investigated the interaction between communication robots and patients. The results showed that the robot was accepted by patients with schizophrenia as a talking partner. The amount of robot talking seemed to affect the impression of the robot on schizophrenics. Utterance process analysis showed that the smoothness of the conversation affected the relationship between robots and schizophrenics.

Method to Record and Analyze the Operation of Seal Robot in Elderly Care

Robot therapy, a mental health care through interactions with robots, has attracted attention as a new method of dementia care. In particular, the therapeutic seal robot named “PARO” is being widely used. When using PARO in elderly facilities, caregivers called “handlers” encourage the elderly people to interact with PARO. However, the usage of PARO was left to the handlers itself. Therefore, there was no intended effect in certain cases. To solve this problem, this study aims to develop a method to record the behaviors of handlers and the reactions of elderly people during the robot therapy and a method to support planning by analyzing the recorded data. A Bayesian network was applied to analyze the relationship between the handler’s behavior and the elderly people’s reactions. To verify usefulness, the experiment was conducted at four elderly facilities between November 2019 and January 2020. The participants were 12 handlers and 21 elderly people. We observed the robot therapy using PARO for 20 min, and subsequently, conducted interviews. Consequently, a model that visualized the relationship between the handler’s behaviors and the elderly people’s reactions was obtained from 40 observed cases. The interviews confirmed that the model was useful for planning a robot therapy.

Robots for Elderly Care in the Home: A Landscape Analysis and Co-Design Toolkit

Over the last two decades, several deployments of robots for in-house assistance of older adults have been trialled. However, these solutions are mostly prototypes and remain unused in real-life scenarios. In this work, we review the historical and current landscape of the field, to try and understand why robots have yet to succeed as personal assistants in daily life. Our analysis focuses on two complementary aspects: the capabilities of the physical platform and the logic of the deployment. The former analysis shows regularities in hardware configurations and functionalities, leading to the definition of a set of six application-level capabilities (exploration, identification, remote control, communication, manipulation, and digital situatedness). The latter focuses on the impact of robots on the daily life of users and categorises the deployment of robots for healthcare interventions using three types of services: support, mitigation, and response. Our investigation reveals that the value of healthcare interventions is limited by a stagnation of functionalities and a disconnection between the robotic platform and the design of the intervention. To address this issue, we propose a novel co-design toolkit, which uses an ecological framework for robot interventions in the healthcare domain. Our approach connects robot capabilities with known geriatric factors, to create a holistic view encompassing both the physical platform and the logic of the deployment. As a case study-based validation, we discuss the use of the toolkit in the pre-design of the robotic platform for an pilot intervention, part of the EU large-scale pilot of the EU H2020 GATEKEEPER project.

Plant Robot for At-Home Behavioral Activation Therapy Reminders to Young Adults with Depression

Adolescents with depression who participate in behavioral activation therapy may find it hard to be motivated to perform tasks at home that their therapists recommend. We describe the initial design and usability evaluation of a home device (“PlantBot”) that could be used to remind young adults with depression at home of their behavioral activation therapy-related tasks. The prototype features electronics in a two-layer base, with a fake plant on top and supported using the Amazon Echo voice agent. We use an online panel study to evaluate the usability of our system with youth with past depression ( N = 30). Initial findings highlight the device’s usability, potential benefit, and attractiveness of the plant component, as well as multiple improvements to be made.

Cyber-physical Support of Daily Activities

This article introduces RAS, a cyber-physical system that supports individuals with memory limitations to perform daily activities in their own homes. RAS represents a partnership between a smart home, a robot, and software agents. When smart home residents perform activities, RAS senses their movement in the space and identifies the current activity. RAS tracks activity steps to detect omission errors. When an error is detected, the RAS robot finds and approaches the human with an offer of assistance. Assistance consists of playing a video recording of the entire activity, showing the omitted activity step, or guiding the resident to the object that is required for the current step. We evaluated RAS performance for 54 participants performing three scripted activities in a smart home testbed and for 2 participants using the system over multiple days in their own homes. In the testbed experiment, activity errors were detected with a sensitivity of 0.955 and specificity of 0.992. RAS assistance was performed successfully with a rate of 0.600. In the in-home experiments, activity errors were detected with a combined sensitivity of 0.905 and a combined specificity of 0.988. RAS assistance was performed successfully for the in-home experiments with a rate of 0.830.

Identity Health

Identity health has especially specific meanings for social relationships in contemporary digital age. First, computerized digital communication makes many citizens in severe maladaptation. The WHO often warns mental addictions of internet usages and online gaming among the youth. The advent of social media and online networking has endangered them in ambiguous situations which are not stabilizing in those basic grounds for human relationships. Further, because social networking sites and social gaming frequently enforce each member to interconnect with the others, many of participating members often hold harder mental debts to respond and maintain their interconnections. In this situation, in other words, it can say that all of users simultaneously might share common conditions under mental illness.

Robot-Enabled Support of Daily Activities in Smart Home Environments

Smart environments offer valuable technologies for activity monitoring and health assessment. Here, we describe an integration of robots into smart environments to provide more interactive support of individuals with functional limitations. RAS, our Robot Activity Support system, partners smart environment sensing, object detection and mapping, and robot interaction to detect and assist with activity errors that may occur in everyday settings. We describe the components of the RAS system and demonstrate its use in a smart home testbed. To evaluate the usability of RAS, we also collected and analyzed feedback from participants who received assistance from RAS in a smart home setting as they performed routine activities.

[Robotics and improvement of the quality of geriatric care]

New technologies offer innovations to improve the care of the elderly with Alzheimer's or and other forms of dementia. Robots, endowed with features such as monitoring of physiological parameters, cognitive training or occupational therapy, have appeared. They are not, however, intended to replace humans. Still underutilized, these robots are in development, much like the digital literacy of the elderly.

Cognitive Training System for Dementia Prevention Using Memory Game Based on the Concept of Human-Agent Interaction

This paper describes a cognitive training system to help older adults to stimulate and maintain their cognitive functions based on a memory game implemented on a tablet device. In this system, a software agent incorporated into the tablet device performs dialogic interactions with users based on the concept of human-agent interaction (HAI) to (i) reduce their psychological resistance to the system; (ii) maintain their interest in the game; and (iii) improve the motivation for users to play the game long term. The difficulty level of the game is adjusted through reinforcement learning algorithms depending on the proficiency of respective users. Several experiments and subjective evaluations by older adults were conducted to evaluate the basic characteristics of the system, and to investigate the impact of the system on cognitive function. The ultimate goal of the proposed system is to establish an environment in which users can continuously engage in dementia-prevention activities without getting bored.

Effectiveness of Robot Paro in Intramural Psychogeriatric Care: A Multicenter Quasi-Experimental Study

BACKGROUND

Together with care professionals, specific psychogeriatric care applications were developed for the seal robot Paro.

OBJECTIVES

This study aims to evaluate the outcomes of the developed Paro interventions, applying the robot in psychogeriatric care.

DESIGN

A multicenter quasi-experimental time series ABAB study (n = 91) with within-subject comparison was conducted to assess both the short-term effects of the Paro interventions for therapeutic applications, and the facilitation of daily care activities by care providers.

SETTING

Small-scale care units (8-10 residents each), spread over 6 different locations, in 3 Dutch care institutions for intramural psychogeriatric care.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 91 patients with dementia, in all stages of dementia.

INTERVENTION

Two user-centered intervention types were applied, one for therapeutic purposes and one for the facilitation of daily care activities.

MEASUREMENTS

Effectiveness was measured with a goal attainment scale (IPPA) and a mood scale (Coop/Wonca), by means of a registration form.

RESULTS

A total of 106 user-specific interventions were defined for 91 participants; 71 participants completed the study, 14 were men and 57 were women. All interventions combined show a significant effect (P < .001).

CONCLUSION

Paro should be seen as a tool for care staff and not as a replacement of care. Successful implementation of Paro in daily intramural psychogeriatric care practice can increase the quality of care and the quality of life for the elderly.

Evidence and Deployment-Based Research into Care for the Elderly Using Emotional Robots

Global aging, particularly in Japan and Europe, an associated shortage of qualified healthcare personnel, and a general preference for living at home, have all sparked an interest in the possibilities offered by robot therapy in improving quality of life. To date, however, both evidence-based research and psychological theory building on whether, and if so how and why, robots can influence the life of the elderly are rather sparse and scattered across many scientific disciplines and countries. The present paper argues in favor of a psychological, cross-cultural framework for evidence-based analyses of emotional robots. Against the background of this framework, we present building blocks for an evidence-based approach to the assessment of emotional robots and discuss interactions between evidence- and deployment-based research.

Socially assistive robots in elderly care: a systematic review into effects and effectiveness

The ongoing development of robotics on the one hand and, on the other hand, the foreseen relative growth in number of elderly individuals suffering from dementia, raises the question of which contribution robotics could have to rationalize and maintain, or even improve the quality of care. The objective of this review was to assess the published effects and effectiveness of robot interventions aiming at social assistance in elderly care. We searched, using Medical Subject Headings terms and free words, in the CINAHL, MEDLINE, Cochrane, BIOMED, PUBMED, PsycINFO, and EMBASE databases. Also the IEEE Digital Library was searched. No limitations were applied for the date of publication. Only articles written in English were taken into account. Collected publications went through a selection process. In the first step, publications were collected from major databases using a search query. In the second step, 3 reviewers independently selected publications on their title, using predefined selection criteria. In the third step, publications were judged based on their abstracts by the same reviewers, using the same selection criteria. In the fourth step, one reviewer made the final selection of publications based on complete content. Finally, 41 publications were included in the review, describing 17 studies involving 4 robot systems. Most studies reported positive effects of companion-type robots on (socio)psychological (eg, mood, loneliness, and social connections and communication) and physiological (eg, stress reduction) parameters. The methodological quality of the studies was, mostly, low. Although positive effects were reported, the scientific value of the evidence was limited. The positive results described, however, prompt further effectiveness research in this field.