Hobbit, a care robot supporting independent living at home: First prototype and lessons learned

: One option to address the challenge of demographic transition is to build robots that enable aging in place. Falling has been identified as the most relevant factor to cause a move to a care facility. The Hobbit project combines research from robotics, gerontology, and human-robot interaction to develop a care robot which is capable of fall prevention and detection as well as emergency detection and handling. Moreover, to enable daily interaction with the robot, other functions are added, such as bringing objects, offering reminders, and entertainment. The interaction with the user is based on a multimodal user interface including automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech, gesture recognition, and a graphical touch-based user interface. We performed controlled laboratory user studies with a total of 49 participants (aged 70 plus) in three EU countries (Austria, Greece, and Sweden). The collected user responses on the usability, acceptance, and affordability of the robot demonstrat...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: RAS
• Authors: David Fischinger, Peter Einramhof, Konstantinos E. Papoutsakis, Walter Wohlkinger, Peter Mayer, Paul Panek, Stefan Hofmann, Tobias Körtner, Astrid Weiss, Antonis A. Argyros, Markus Vincze
• Keywords: RAS 2016, Robotics