Living Labs in Social Service Institutions: An Effective Method to Improve the Ethical, Reliable Use of Digital Assistive Robots to Support Social Services

Abstract

The measures taken to prevent further damage by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) accelerated the negative impact of the shortage of carers on the availability of social services, especially in long-term care institutions. Although much has been done in recent years to develop digital solutions to assist people who need care, such as socially assistive robots (SAR) nothing can substitute for human carers in times of crisis. The current paper describes a planned research study to work out answers to three research questions of the CareSAR <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> research program: (A)What is the status of digitized assistive tools that are primarily designed and developed to support carers in long-term care institutions and home care?(B)What are the main reasons why existing digitized tools and equipment/devices using artificial intelligence are not yet used to the extent that is needed to mitigate the shortage of carers in a crisis and critical situations?(C)What kind of support can be provided by a living lab that is designed to develop effective, ethical, and socially acceptable digital devices to assist carers in their caring environment? The analysis of projects, that were designed to develop assisting robots to mitigate the lack of carers and the research of existing living labs conducted in social care institutions shall evaluate the opportunities how social assistive robots get the chance to be used largely.