Conversational affective social robots for ageing and dementia support

Socially assistive robots (SAR) hold significant potential to assist older adults and people with dementia in human engagement and clinical contexts by supporting mental health and independence at home. While SAR research has recently experienced prolific growth, long-term trust, clinical translation and patient benefit remain immature. Affective human-robot interactions are unresolved and the deployment of robots with conversational abilities is fundamental for robustness and humanrobot engagement. In this paper, we review the state of the art within the past two decades, design trends, and current applications of conversational affective SAR for ageing and dementia support. A horizon scanning of AI voice technology for healthcare, including ubiquitous smart speakers, is further introduced to address current gaps inhibiting home use. We discuss the role of user-centred approaches in the design of voice systems, including the capacity to handle communication breakdowns for effective use by target populations. We summarise the state of development in interactions using speech and natural language processing, which forms a baseline for longitudinal health monitoring and cognitive assessment. Drawing from this foundation, we identify open challenges and propose future directions to advance conversational affective social robots for: 1) user engagement, 2) deployment in real-world settings, and 3) clinical translation

Live Long and Prosper? Boldly going into the fourth - age

Around two-thirds of the projected increase in spending is expected to be on clinical aged-healthcare (particularly funding of new technologies and support services). [...]with healthier lifestyles, higher incomes and better education all contributing to boosting life expectancy, growth in costs of age-related pensions, adds further economic pressure. [...]present society and policymakers need to look with fresh eyes at what living in the 4th-age will become; and identify what benefits this increasing demographic can contribute and bring to the wider society. [...]social isolation is decreased through friendships forged in digital communities. Unless the economic model changes, the tax base will shrink while government spending on aged-healthcare will expand substantially; and a dwindling number of younger workers will have to carry the financial burden of supporting the much older generations. * Extending longevity may seem to be a positive product of an advanced society

State of the Art Lower Limb Robotic Exoskeletons for Elderly Assistance

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8759880/keywords#keywordsThe number of elderly populations is rapidly increasing. Majority of elderly people face difficulties while walking because the muscular activity or other gait-related parameters start to deteriorate with aging. Therefore, the quality of life among them can be suffered. To make their life more comfortable, service providing robotic solutions in terms of wearable powered exoskeletons should be realized. Assistive powered exoskeletons are capable of providing additional torque to support various activities, such as walking, sit to stand, and stand to sit motions to subjects with mobility impairments. Specifically, the powered exoskeletons try to maintain and keep subjects' limbs on the specified motion trajectory. The state of the art of currently available lower limb assistive exoskeletons for weak and elderly people is presented in this paper. The technology employed in the assistive devices, such as actuation and power supply types, control strategies, their functional abilities, and the mechanism design, is thoroughly described. The outcome of studied literature reveals that there is still much work to be done in the improvement of assistive exoskeletons in terms of their technological aspects, such as choosing proper and effective control methods, developing user friendly interfaces, and decreasing the costs of device to make it more affordable, meanwhile ensuring safe interaction for the end-users

Japan's silver market: creating a new industry under uncertainty

It has often been asked whether today´s Japan will be able to move into new and promising industries, or whether it is locked into an innovation system with an inherent inability to give birth to new industries. One argument reasons that the thick institutional complementarities among labour, innovation, and finance among its enterprises and the public sector favour industrial development in sectors of intermediate uncertainty, while it is difficult to move into areas of major uncertainty. In this paper, we present the case of the silver industry or, somewhat more prosaically, the 60+ or even 50+ industry, for which most would agree that Japan has indeed become a lead market and lead producer on the global market. For an institutional economist, the case of the silver industry is particularly interesting, because Japan´s success is based on the cooperation of existing actors, the enterprise and public sector in particular, which helped overcome the information uncertainties and asymmetries involved in the new market by relying on several established mechanisms developed well before. In that sense, Japan´s silver industry presents a case of of what we propose to call successful institutional path activation with the effect of an innovative market creation, instead of the problematic lockin effects that are usually associated with the term path dependence

Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) Bridging Innovation to Health Promotion and Health Service Provision

A number of experiences have demonstrated how digital solutions are effective in improving quality of life (QoL) and health outcomes for older adults. Smart Health Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) is a new concept introduced in Europe since 2017 that combines the concept of Age-Friendly Environments with Information Technologies, supported by health and community care to improve the health and disease management of older adults and during the life-course. This chapter aims to provide an initial overview of the experiences available not only in Europe, based on the research work of the participants of the International Interdisciplinary Network on Health and Well-being in an Age-Friendly Digital World (NET4Age-Friendly), which could be of interest to preventive, health and social authorities. The chapter reports good practices, pain points, and bottlenecks that may require a collaborative, interdisciplinary research approach to facilitate the transformations towards smart, sustainable, health and age-friendly cities and communities

Social robots as psychometric tools for cognitive assessment: a pilot test

Recent research demonstrated the benefits of employing robots as therapeutic assistants and caregivers, but very little is known on the use of robots as a tool for psychological assessment. Socially capable robots can provide many advantages to diagnostic practice: engage people, guarantee standardized administration and assessor neutrality, perform automatic recording of subject behaviors for further analysis by practitioners. In this paper, we present a pilot study on testing people’s cognitive functioning via social interaction with a humanoid robot. To this end, we programmed a social robot to administer a psychometric tool for detecting Mild Cognitive Impairment, a risk factor for dementia, implementing the first prototype of robotic assistant for mass screening of elderly population. Finally, we present a pilot test of the robotic procedure with healthy adults that show promising results of the robotic test, also compared to its traditional paper version

Social, Technological and Health Innovation: Opportunities and Limitations for Social Policy, Health Policy, and Environmental Policy

This Research Topic focuses on both strengths and weaknesses of social innovation, technological innovation, and health innovation that are increasingly recognized as crucial concepts related to the formulation of responses to the social, health, and environmental challenges. Goals of this Research Topic: (1) to identify and share the best recent practices and innovations related to social, environmental and health policies; (2) to debate on relevant governance modes, management tools as well as evaluation and impact assessment techniques; (3) to discuss dilemmas in the fields of management, financing, designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining the sustainability of innovative models of delivering social, health and care services; and (4) to recognize and analyze social, technological and health innovation that has emerged or has been scaled-up to respond to crisis situations, for example, a pandemic of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease

Enabling personalised medical support for chronic disease management through a hybrid robot-cloud approach

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Microbial contamination and efficacy of disinfection procedures of companion robots in care homes

Background Paro and other robot animals can improve wellbeing for older adults and people with dementia, through reducing depression, agitation and medication use. However, nursing and care staff we contacted expressed infection control concerns. Little related research has been published. We assessed (i) how microbiologically contaminated robot animals become during use by older people within a care home and (ii) efficacy of a cleaning procedure. Methods This study had two stages. In stage one we assessed microbial load on eight robot animals after interaction with four care home residents, and again following cleaning by a researcher. Robot animals provided a range of shell-types, including fur, soft plastic, and solid plastic. Stage two involved a similar process with two robot animals, but a care staff member conducted cleaning. The cleaning process involved spraying with anti-bacterial product, brushing fur-type shells, followed by vigorous top-to-tail cleaning with anti-bacterial wipes on all shell types. Two samples were taken from each of eight robots in stage one and two robots in stage two (20 samples total). Samples were collected using contact plate stamping and evaluated using aerobic colony count and identification (gram stain, colony morphology, coagulase agglutination). Colony counts were measured by colony forming units per square centimetre (CFU/cm2). Results Most robots acquired microbial loads well above an acceptable threshold of 2.5 CFU/cm2 following use. The bacteria identified were micrococcus species, coagulase negative staphylococcus, diptheriods, aerobic spore bearers, and staphylococcus aureus, all of which carry risk for human health. For all devices the CFU/cm2 reduced to well within accepted limits following cleaning by both researcher and care staff member. Conclusions Companion robots will acquire significant levels of bacteria during normal use. The simple cleaning procedure detailed in this study reduced microbial load to acceptable levels in controlled experiments. Further work is needed in the field and to check the impact on the transmission of viruses