Principal Investigator: Guillem Alenyà
Email: galenya@iri.upc.edu
Web: https://www.iri.upc.edu/research/perception
Brief Theme Description:
The rapid growth of the aging population is putting pressure on healthcare systems around the world. There is an urgent need for senior care services. Assistive robots are not yet a reality in helping people in hospitals or in their homes. These must coexist with humans and their objectives must align with people’s cognitive and emotional needs, preferences, and habits. To do this, robots must present key capabilities such as proactivity, understanding of the environment, and the ability to learn the user’s preferences or explain why they make certain decisions.
This proposed research aims to implement these key capabilities. Using a co-design approach with key stakeholders (users, caregivers, industry, and government) is crucial to creating a robotic system that can offer personalized and long-lasting interactions with older adults. The main objective will be to create transferable knowledge to help society and to contribute to the creation of a new economic sector.
Available Infrastructures: Fully equipped Robot Perception and Manipulation Laboratory, see https://www.iri.upc.edu/research/perception#facilities.
Possible Secondments: KIT Karlsruhe (Robot Proactivity); CHART Nottingham (User Studies); IAI Bremen (Knowledge-based representations.).
Keywords: Assistive Robotics; Awareness; Learning; HRI.
