Social Robot

The main goal of the proposed project is to provide an answer to the demographic change challenge, through knowledge transfer and the creation of strategic synergies between the project's participating academia and industry regarding the development of an integrated Social Robotics system (SocialRobot) for "Ageing Well". The work focuses on bringing together the Robotic and Computer Science fields by integrating state of the art Robotic and Virtual Social Care Communities technologies and services to provide solutions to key issues of relevance for improved independent living and quality of life of elderly people and efficiency of care. The SocialRobot development will be based on a "human centred approach" in which the elderly individual needs and requirements are met. The project will give the opportunity to participating SMEs with excellent credit in their domain and peripheral European regions, to reach excellence and compete with innovative products in the elderly care market, at European and International level. The major challenges to be addressed in the project include the adaptation of state of the art robotic mobile platforms and their integration with a virtual collaborative social network to provide: - Detection of individual needs and requirements related to ageing (e.g. physical mobility limitations or/and cognitive decline), and provision of support through timely involvement of care teams, consisting of different groups of people (family members, neighbours, friends) that collaborate dynamically and virtually; means independently of time and their physical locations; behaviour analysis to adapt social relationships and contexts of the elderly people as they age; - Navigate indoors and unstructured environments and provide affective and empathetic user-robotic interaction, taking into account the capabilities of and acceptance by elderly users.