The difference of user's impression between an intelligent medicine case and a home interface robot

Abstract

In advanced countries like Japan, the number of elderly recipients who take medicine every day has been increasing due to the aging of the population. Since they have many risks of inappropriate medication (e.g. overdose), we have developed an intelligent medicine case named iMec in order to assist caregivers in monitoring. In addition, we will help a recipient directly by using a display and a speaker embedded in the medicine case. Meanwhile, an interface robot which communicated with complex house appliances has been developed to provide a variety of services. Therefore, we consider how the recipient should be supported by the medicine case and the interface robot in the house. In this paper, we set up an experimental environment and research the difference of recipient's impression between the medicine case and the interface robot. As a result, we confirm that the interface robot is more effective in self-medication support than the medicine case because a recipient is apt to listen to the friendly robot.