Robots That Care: Socially Assistive Robotics for Eldercare

The nexus of advances in robotics, NLU, and machine learning has created opportunities for personalized robots for the various domains of eldercare: aging in place, assisted living, and nursing homes. Additionally, the pandemic has both caused and exposed unprecedented levels of caregiving needs worldwide.   Socially assistive robotics has the potential to address those and longer-standing care needs through personalized and affordable support.

 

This talk will discuss human-robot interaction methods for socially assistive robotics that utilize multi-modal interaction data and expressive and persuasive robot behavior to monitor, coach, and motivate elderly users to engage in health, wellness, physical, social, and cognitive activities. Methods and results will be presented that include modeling, learning, and personalizing user motivation, engagement, and coaching of users ranging from healthy elderly to Alzheimer's patients, in short and long-term (month+) deployments in assisted living and in homes. Research and commercial implications and pathways will be discussed.