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Fostering the NAO Platform as an Elderly care Robot
First Steps Toward a Low-Cost Off-the-Shelf Solution
Jessica P.M. Vital
Engineering Institute of Coimbra
–RoboCorp,
Coimbra, Portugal
A21200422@isec.pt
Micael S. Couceiro
Engineering Institute of Coimbra
RoboCorp, Department of Electrical Engineering
Coimbra, Portugal
micael@isec.pt
Nuno M. M. Rodrigues
Engineering Institute of Coimbra
–RoboCorp,
Coimbra, Portugal
A21200432@isec.pt
Carlos M. Figueiredo
Engineering Institute of Coimbra
RoboCorp, Department of Electrical Engineering
Coimbra, Portugal
cfigueiredo@isec.pt
Nuno M. F. Ferreira
Engineering Institute of Coimbra
RoboCorp, Department of Electrical Engineering
Coimbra, Portugal
nunomig@isec.pt
Abstract— Depression and loneliness among the elderly are one
of the biggest problems affecting the world population. This
leads to elderly isolation which is a major risk factor for sui-
cide. Moreover, if isolation is coupled with physical illness and
incapacitation, such a risk increases exponentially. To fight
back this problem, roboticists have been proposing solutions to
autonomously monitor, support and even promote physical
activities among the elderly. Nevertheless, those appear as very
high-cost and complex solutions that require an advanced
technical expertise. Recent off-the-shelf solutions, such as the
well-known NAO robot, emerged as possible alternatives. An
extension to the NAO robot, denoted as RIA, is being devel-
oped at the Engineering Institute of Coimbra (ISEC). The RIA
is not only built for a social interaction with the elderly but also
as an autonomous tool to promote professional care through
the analysis of health and environmental parameters. There-
fore, the RIA robot is an adapted NAO low-cost platform
equipped with several sensors that can measure different pa-
rameters like body temperature, blood pressure and heart rate.
By validating this valuable platform, the foundations were laid
for a whole new paradigm in elderly care.
I. INTRODUCTION
Depression and loneliness among the elderly are now one of
the biggest problems affecting the world population [1].
Moreover, the increasing isolation of the elderly, whether in
rural or urban society requires extra care and monitoring of
qualified professionals to ensure the welfare and health of
this population. However, it is difficult to ensure the con-
stant presence of professionals. Also, that care may not
reach every user, especially those living in poor and disad-
vantaged means. To combat this difficulty, many research-
ers have been addressing social robotics as a possible solu-
tion.
Figure 1. Robot NAO.
This paper will present the NAO robot (Fig. 1) as a social
platform ideally fitted to monitor and promote the physical
activity within the elderly population. To this end, the plat-
form must be able to able to replicate human motion with
twenty five degrees-of-freedom (DOF) so as to promote
physical activity among the elderly. The platform should
also be able to prevent osteoarticular diseases, i.e., arthrosis
and osteoporosis, as well as cardiovascular diseases, e.g.,
acute myocardial infarction. Moreover, and to protect the
elderly from possible treats, the platform should also be able
assess the environmental-contextual information.
Bearing these ideas in mind, this paper paves the way to-
ward the direction of a novel robotic platform denoted as
RIA, from the Portuguese Robô Idoso Activo (Elderly Active
Robot). The idea behind RIA is to equip the NAO robot
with several sensors in order to passively monitor multiple
parameters such as glucose levels, blood pressure, heart rate,
body temperature and, at the environmental level, monitor
the temperature, humidity, gas measurement and fire detec-
tion.
Yet, as a first step, this paper revolves around the choice
behind the NAO solution. In a broad sense, this robot can
accomplish several basic actions like sitting down, walking,
pick up things with hands, among others. Those are the
minimum necessary requirements for such a task of taking
care of someone. Nevertheless, those are not the only main
features from the NAO platform. Next section describes
some of its main applications around social robotics.
II. APPLICATIONS
The NAO robot has been used in many applications but this
paper focus on the ones regarding the interaction with hu-
mans – an area usually known as social robotics. However,
it should be noteworthy that the NAO platform has been
used in many other applications, such as the traditional
robotic soccer (e.g., [2]).
a) Austism children
The NAO platform has been used to help autistic children in
improving their behaviour [3] [4]. These two articles pre-
sented a detailed information about the capabilities of NAO
under such applications. The authors in [3] presented some
interesting results about the use of analyzing the influence
of NAO robot in children with autism. The authors stated
how a basic human interactive robot is able to suppress the
autistic behavior during human-robot interactions and that
the child is able to maintain visual contact with the robot.
Similarly, the authors in [4] presented some identical results
concluding that children did not exhibit autistic behaviors
while interacting with the NAO platform (Fig. 2). Although
the number of studied cases is fairly small and cannot return
conclusive results, one may conclude that the use of the
NAO robot within such applications is still an alternative.
Figure 2. Interaction with children.
b) Visual Interaction
An interesting feature inherent to the NAO robot it is the
visual capability, being one of the fundamental requirements
for social robotics. The authors in [5] presented a real-time
visual system to interact with humans. The system was
based upon probability models that use color and the shape
of the object to be recognized. This algorithm is quite com-
putationally simple which means that it can be processed in
real time. Also, their object recognition was not only guided
by the distribution of color but also by the spatial distribu-
tion of pixels, thus meaning that there was an improved
control of various objects and reasoning about occlusions.
c) Interaction with humans
The interaction with humans (Fig. 3) is one of the main
attributes of NAO platform [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. The authors
in [6] proposed a technique for programming the move-
ments of NAO’s entire body through observation. This was
accomplished using Jacobian matrices and a new form of
optimization of joint trajectories with B-Spline, thus gener-
ating optimal whole body movements. The authors in [7]
showed how the NAO’s vision and hearing features are
important for teaching tasks in a social environment.
Through this study one were able to withdraw some interest-
ing conclusions such as that the direct visual access to the
robot tends to build mental models of auditory cues that
help to improve the performance of the instructor. This
provides accurate information about the internal state of the
robot. The study revealed that people easily constructed
mental models in natural environments, but with an incom-
plete knowledge of how the robot operates / works.
The work in [9] concluded that the study provides evidence
that large mutual influences between cognitive neuroscience
and social robotics enable a better understanding of man
which leads to an increased acceptance of future robotic
companions in society. The authors in [10] presented a
transportation system of humanoid robots based on learning.
The objective of this study was to successfully transport an
object using two NAO robots by means of cooperation.
Preliminary results showed that this approach was very
effective, hence highlighting the cooperative capabilities
inherent to NAO (e.g., communication).
Figure 3. Interaction with humans.
III. COMERCIAL ALTERNATIVES FOR ELDERLY CARE
This section presents several alternatives to our proposed
solution inspired in the robot NAO. This section allows
withdrawing some conclusions regarding the choices carried
out in this paper, thus highlighting the low-cost advantage
of NAO.
a) Telehealth
The project Telehealth being currently developed by ISA
(Intelligent Sensing Anywhere) is one of the most interest-
ing solutions. However, it is the authors’ opinion that the
project still presents some gaps. It provides several meas-
urements with a high reliability regarding the patient’s envi-
ronment. This system focus on a more reliable record sav-
ings than in the social aspect regarding the elderlies needs.
Hence, although its usefulness, this project still lacks on one
of the biggest problems in our society: the loneliness of the
elderlies. Our project aims on using a lower number of sens-
ing information but plays an important role on the social
aspect.
b) Ambient Assisted Living
Ambient assisted living is one of the most recent research
areas. Such projects are interesting solutions to monitor
elders’ behavior. Nevertheless, to the similarity of
Telehealth, the authors highlight the problem of being static
solutions. In other words, the solution and the various sen-
sors that are included in those designs can be installed in
houses, but cannot be transported to any other location. The
proposed solution, on the other hand, has the portability
ability being easy to transport anywhere and with autono-
mous navigation capabilities. Moreover, it still allows moni-
toring vital signs and following up in person anywhere.
Figure 4. Nursebot.
Figure 5. PARO Therapeutic Robot
c) Nursebot
The Nursebot project (Fig. 4) is a mobile, personal service
robot that assists elderly people [11]. That robot provides a
research platform to test out a large range of ideas for assist-
ing elderly people such as intelligent reminding,
telepresence, data collection, mobile manipulation and so-
cial interaction. For instance, this robot can advertise the
patients to do not forget to take medicine. Nevertheless,
contrarily to the herein proposed platform, it does not pos-
sess any kind of sensing capabilities regarding both envi-
ronmental and health information. Moreover, the NAO
robot is a human-like platform, thus hastening its identifica-
tion and interaction by the elderly. It is also noteworthy that
the NAO platform is considerably less expensive than the
Nursebot.
d) PARO THERAPEUTIC ROBOT
PARO (Fig. 5) is a therapeutic robot baby harp seal [12].
PARO is an advanced interactive robot that fosters the bene-
fits of animal therapy to be administered to patients in envi-
ronments such as hospitals and nursing homes. PARO can
reduce the patient stress and stimulates the interaction be-
tween patients. The similarities with the NAO extension end
here. As previously mentioned, besides social interaction,
we aim at acquiring data that may be useful, e.g., measure
the healthy parameters, and at promoting physical exercises.
Moreover, the cost advantage regarding NAO still remains.
IV. FROM NAO TO RIA
The previous sections briefly presented the features and
applicability of the NAO robot. Despite all its advantages
over other alternatives, the NAO is not prepared for an el-
derly care task.
This section briefly summarizes our strategy to turn the
NAO robot in the ideal low-cost tool for the elderly care.
This will be a completely remodeled platform with several
new sensors, both environmental and health sensors. The
next topics give a brief overview on the sensors that will be
equipped on NAO:
Smoke detector: this sensor will allow detecting possible
fire outbreaks. In case of detection, NAO will alert the
patient, as well as the agents in charge of it. Further-
more, it will plan alternative paths to some predefined
safe locations and guide the elder toward those;
Temperature: the NAO robot will be able to sense two
different kinds of temperatures: the environmental and
the patient. If the corporal temperature of the patient is
not regular then the robot NAO will alert the patient and
the agents in charge of it. Regarding the environmental
temperature, the robot NAO may alert for irregular lev-
els to make a better environmental place for the patient;
Humidity: This sensor measures the humidity that exists
in the environment. If the values of humidity are not ap-
propriate for the health of the patient, the robot NAO
will send an alert with those levels.
Others: Health sensors that may monitor the blood pres-
sure, glucose and others will also be studied.
V. CONCLUSION
To attend the necessities of our community, the RIA robot
will not leave old people alone and may give the required
attention that this people need. People already have several
entertainments such as television, radio and others. Howev-
er, nothing compares to a humanoid robot when it comes to
assist the human being on social and daily life situations.
Robots can save many lives, either on a military field on in
our houses.
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