Assistive living robot: a remotely controlled robot for older persons living alone

This paper describes the development of an assistive living robot, which is affordable and can be steered over the Internet by family member to remotely monitor and help assess the wellbeing of an older relative living alone. A commercially available iRobot Create platform was used as a starting point for the Assistive Living Robot. Our system (i) takes advantage of commercially available systems to reduce development cost and effort, (ii) acts as a video and audio communication tool between older persons and their family members or caregivers and (iii) can analyze the video feed to detect heart rate and breathing rate. The proposed system could be integrated with in-home monitoring sensors, which could be the trigger for alerting family members that an out of ordinary event is occurring, therefore, our robot could be woken up and sent to be used as over the Internet watchful eye.