Socially Assistive Robots in Smart Environments to Attend Elderly People—A Survey.

Abstract

Assistive environments for daily living (Ambient Assisted Living, AAL) include the deployment of sensors and certain actuators in the home or residence where the person to be cared for lives so that, with the help of the necessary computational management and decision-making mechanisms, the person can live a more autonomous life. Such technologies are becoming more affordable and popular. However, despite the undoubted potential of the services offered by these AAL systems, there are serious problems of acceptance today. In part, these problems arise from the design phase, which often does not sufficiently take into account the end users. On the other hand, it is complex for these older people to interact with interfaces that are sometimes not very natural or intuitive. The use of a socially assistive robot (SAR) that serves as an interface to the AAL system and takes responsibility for the interaction with the person is a possible solution. The robot is a physical entity that can operate with a certain degree of autonomy and be able to bring features to the interaction with the person that, obviously, a tablet or smartphone will not be able to do. The robot can benefit from the recent popularization of artificial intelligence-based solutions to personalize its attention to the person and to provide new services. Their inclusion in an AAL ecosystem should, however, also be carefully assessed. The robot’s mission should not be to replace the person but to be a tool to facilitate the elderly person’s daily life. Its design should consider the AAL system in which it is integrated, the needs and preferences of the people with whom it will interact, and the services that, in conjunction with this system, the robot can offer. The aim of this article is to review the current state of the art in the integration of SARs into the AAL ecosystem and to determine whether an initial phase of high expectations but very limited results have been overcome.