A Telementoring Robot for Home Care

Assistive technologies for telementoring in homes constitute a very promising avenue to decrease load on the health care system, reduce hospitalization period and improve quality of life. Teleoperated from a distant location, a mobile robot with some autonomous capabilities could become a beneficial tool in telehealth applications. However, design issues related to such systems are broad and mostly unexplored (e.g. locomotion and navigation in home settings, remote interaction and patient acceptability, evaluation of clinical needs and its integration into health care information systems). Mobile robots operating in home environments must deal with constrained space and a great variety of obstacles and situations to handle. This paper presents the interdisciplinary design methodology followed to develop Telerobot, a telepresence assistive mobile robot for home care assistance of elderly people. Using field trials with existing platforms, focus groups and interviews, initial requirements for the new mobile robot platform with its augmented video user interfaces are outlined.