TY - JOUR
T1 - Hobbit: Providing Fall Detection and Prevention for the Elderly in the Real World
AU - Bajones, Markus
AU - Fischinger, David
AU - Weiss, Astrid
AU - Wolf, Daniel
AU - Vincze, Markus
AU - de la Puente, Paloma
AU - Körtner, Tobias
AU - Weninger, Markus
AU - Papoutsakis, Konstantinos
AU - Michel, Damien
AU - Qammaz, Ammar
AU - Panteleris, Paschalis
AU - Foukarakis, Michalis
AU - Adami, Ilia
AU - Ioannidi, Danai
AU - Leonidis, Asterios
AU - Antona, Margherita
AU - Argyros, Antonis
AU - Mayer, Peter
AU - Panek, Paul
AU - Eftring, Håkan
AU - Frennert, Susanne
PY - 2018/6/3
Y1 - 2018/6/3
N2 - We present the robot developed within the Hobbit project, a socially assistive service robot aiming at the challenge of enabling prolonged independent living of elderly people in their own homes. We present the second prototype (Hobbit PT2) in terms of hardware and functionality improvements following first user studies. Our main contribution lies within the description of all components developed within the Hobbit project, leading to autonomous operation of 371 days during field trials in Austria, Greece, and Sweden. In these field trials, we studied how 18 elderly users (aged 75 years and older) lived with the autonomously interacting service robot over multiple weeks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a multifunctional, low-cost service robot equipped with a manipulator was studied and evaluated for several weeks under real-world conditions. We show that Hobbit’s adaptive approach towards the user increasingly eased the interaction between the users and Hobbit. We provide lessons learned regarding the need for adaptive behavior coordination, support during emergency situations, and clear communication of robotic actions and their consequences for fellow researchers who are developing an autonomous, low-cost service robot designed to interact with their users in domestic contexts. Our trials show the necessity to move out into actual user homes, as only there can we encounter issues such as misinterpretation of actions during unscripted human-robot interaction.
AB - We present the robot developed within the Hobbit project, a socially assistive service robot aiming at the challenge of enabling prolonged independent living of elderly people in their own homes. We present the second prototype (Hobbit PT2) in terms of hardware and functionality improvements following first user studies. Our main contribution lies within the description of all components developed within the Hobbit project, leading to autonomous operation of 371 days during field trials in Austria, Greece, and Sweden. In these field trials, we studied how 18 elderly users (aged 75 years and older) lived with the autonomously interacting service robot over multiple weeks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a multifunctional, low-cost service robot equipped with a manipulator was studied and evaluated for several weeks under real-world conditions. We show that Hobbit’s adaptive approach towards the user increasingly eased the interaction between the users and Hobbit. We provide lessons learned regarding the need for adaptive behavior coordination, support during emergency situations, and clear communication of robotic actions and their consequences for fellow researchers who are developing an autonomous, low-cost service robot designed to interact with their users in domestic contexts. Our trials show the necessity to move out into actual user homes, as only there can we encounter issues such as misinterpretation of actions during unscripted human-robot interaction.
U2 - 10.1155/2018/1754657
DO - 10.1155/2018/1754657
M3 - Article
VL - 2018
JO - Journal of Robotics
JF - Journal of Robotics
SN - 1687-9600
M1 - 1754657
ER -