Designing a robotic assistant for healthcare applications

The population of the world is ageing rapidly. By 2050, the population aged 85 and over will be three times more than it is now. This phenomenon has caused several issues in the current health service system, especially workforce shortages in the health sector and a lack of space in aged care facilities (ACFs). In the face of these issues, home-based and community-based healthcare services have been identified as necessary in many developed countries to promote ageing-inplace and independent living in order to: 1. Lower the demands on health services and hence improve the quality of the services delivered, and 2. Maintain the quality of life of the older population by enabling them to be close to their families. For the last decade, a rising interest in personal robots as part of the technical solution in decentralised health services has led to an extensive range of research and implementations of health service and personal assistant robots. This paper describes a new research project to develop an assistant robot capable of interacting with patients, taking vital signs measurements and recording the data in healthcare environments such as aged care facilities, hospitals or personal homes. Current progress includes a comprehensive literature survey on recent health service robots with a list of issues in the area and an initial human-robot interaction study. The robot is currently interfaced with a blood pressure monitor and has a 3D face which is capable of displaying a range of different emotions with lips synchronized to speech.