A Holistic Approach for Advancing Robots in Ambient Assisted Living Environments

Due to the demographic change in western society, new challenges regarding healthcare of the elderly population are at the verge of surfacing. Since young people are not capable of sustaining an adequate healthcare for elderly people, new healthcare fields have to be devised. Recent advances in information and communication technology enable the support of elderly people in their domestic environment. The EU project RADIO will design of an old age compliant smart home environment which specializes in fulfilling the needs of elderly people. This is partially achieved through a mobile robot platform which serves as an assistant to the respective elderly person. Apart from this, the robot also functions as a mobile sensor platform. Under this context, unobtrusiveness is of paramount importance since the robot should be a natural participant of patients' daily life. This paper discusses such a healthcare facility, analyses its requirements and poses the challenges towards this direction.