Tele-Operated Robots in Elderly Care at Home: A Survey on Needs and Perceptions of Elderly People and Caregivers

Abstract

Objective: Remotely-controlled assistive robots can help improving the quality of life of frail elderly people, by assisting them in specific tasks identified as relevant for an independent and autonomous life. Within the EU-funded research project “Multi-Role Shadow Robotic System for Independent Living” (SRS), the ability of such systems to meet the users' needs, perceptions and feelings has been investigated, in order to generate technical requirements and realistic usage scenarios for developing a new semi-autonomous remotely-controlled and selflearning assistive robot.