With the increasing labour shortages, an ageing population and more complex health care, digitization and technology are necessary to be able to continue to provide high-quality care. Together with residents, family, and professional caregivers, we are going to develop an emotion-intelligent robot that can help healthcare professionals provide person-oriented care. Care is and will always be carried out by people and that is why the human dimension is paramount in this project.
The project focuses on the transition of health care to treatment methods and interventions for personalized care using an Emotion Intelligent (EI) care robot. The objective of the project is: “Development and validation of an Emotion Intelligent Care Robot for long-term care residents with an intellectual disability and residents with dementia using living labs”.
In addition to development, the research focus is on improving the quality of life of residents, supporting healthcare professionals, and implementation in care processes. Besides the main objective, the project has four sub-goals.
Subgoal 1 – Set up living labs in long-term care institutions for residents with an intellectual disability and residents with dementia for experiments and pilots with the EI care robot.
Subgoal 2 – Develop an EI care robot, which can perform AI-based interventions based on real-time emotion recognition and resident profiles.
Subgoal 3 – Investigate the effectiveness of the use of an EI care robot.
Subgoal 4 – Develop an implementation plan for the EI care robot in long-term care.
Emotion intelligent care robot
Mentech has developed the HUME, a smart sensor platform, to detect stress build-up at an early stage. Care robot Sara has various tailor-made modules to help with person-centred care tasks and daytime activities. By integrating emotion recognition and person-centred interventions, an autonomous Emotion-intelligent care robot is realized. This robot can perform many social functions autonomously, tailored to the needs of the individual resident and their state of mind. For large-scale implementation, the EI robot must also become an integral part of the care process and be tailored to the wishes and needs of all users.
To this end, the consortium is setting up living labs in the long-term care sector. In the living labs, the ‘social functions’ based on algorithm-driven interventions of the autonomous care robot are developed and investigated. The living lab setting means that the experiences of residents, family and professional caregivers are directly included in the development and validation process. The conditions for integration of the EI robot in the care process, aimed at scaling up and implementation, are also being investigated in the living lab.
