Remote monitoring of nursing home residents using a humanoid robot

Abstract

We studied the feasibility of using a humanoid robot as an assistant in the monitoring of nursing home residents. The robot can receive alarms via its wireless Internet connection and navigate independently to the room where the alarm originated. Once it has entered the room, the robot can transmit near real time images to the staff and also open a voice connection between the resident and the remote caregivers. This way the remote caregiver is able to check the situation in the room, and take appropriate actions. We tested the prototype robot in three private nursing homes in the Finnish county of South Ostrobothnia. During the testing, 2–4 alarms were produced by each participant and there were 29 alarms in total. The robot was able to navigate correctly to the room from which the alarm was sent and open the speech connection, as well as transmit images via the wireless Internet connection. The experiments provided evidence of the feasibility of using autonomous robots as assistants to nursing home staff in remote monitoring. The response from the nursing home residents was uniformly positive.