Human-Robot Interaction in Elder Care
Papers from the 2011 AAAI Workshop
Ted Metzler, Workshop Chair
Technical Report WS-11-12
46 pp., $25.00
ISBN 978-1-57735-528-1
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AI research and development is being conducted in many parts of the world to create assistive robots for the care of older people. Complexity and scale of this work mark it as an important technological phenomenon, commonly associated with challenges presented by interrelated social conditions such as expanding longevity, declining birth rates, rising health care costs, and shortages of nurses. Although these conditions understandably recommend cost, reliability, and efficiency as measures for success of the robotic applications it also is important that we attend to resulting quality of life for the end users. This latter measure points especially to concerns of the relatively young and conspicuously multidisciplinary research field of human-robot interaction (HRI). Accordingly, our workshop aims to assemble leading representatives from a fairly broad range of disciplines (for example, engineering, computer science, psychology, and health care) to enable responsible dialogue contributing to achievement of our main objective: delivering robotic care for elders that enhances — or, at least, does not degrade — their quality of life.