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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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An assistive household robot
— doing more than just cleaning | | Author(s) | Julia Kantorovitch, Janne Vare, Vesa Pehkonen |
| Journal title | Journal of Assistive Technologies, vol 8, no 2, 2014 |
| Publisher | Emerald, 2014 |
| Pages | pp 64-76 |
| Source | www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/jat.htm |
| Keywords | Assistive technology ; Domiciliary services ; Accident prevention ; Safety devices ; Evaluation. |
| Annotation | The purpose of this paper was to create new ideas for assistive technology products at home, especially products using robotic consumer appliances available in the homes of older people. The work was founded on a reported increase in household robots as well as an ageing population in the industrialised world. Earlier studies have shown that in addition to cleaning functions, new household robots can change home routines and people's relationship to them. Taking these studies as a starting point, this paper proposed a vacuum cleaner robot as a platform for developing pervasive safety services and described implementation of a conceptual prototype which brought the feeling of safety to an older person and their relatives by assisting in case of accidents. The results were then presented of an empirical evaluation of the prototype with end-users. It was proved that reasonably priced off-the-shelf components could be used to build the safety product demonstration model. The initial evaluation results, as well as referenced studies showed that the acceptance rate of a household robot-based product was high. However to add more practicality to the research and move towards product development, a strong industrial partner involved in household robotics would be needed. For increased reliability and robustness, more research is required in areas of advanced sensing technology and decision algorithms. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150619256 A |
| Classmark | M: N: OQ: OT: 4C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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