Mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) systems incorporate video conferencing equipment onto mobile robot devices which can be steered from remote locations. These systems, which are primarily used in the context of promoting social interaction between people, are becoming increasingly popular within certain application domains such as health care environments, independent living for the elderly, and office environments. In this paper, an overview of the various systems, application areas, and challenges found in the literature concerning mobile robotic telepresence is provided. The survey also proposes a set terminology for the field as there is currently a lack of standard terms for the different concepts related to MRP systems. Further, this paper provides an outlook on the various research directions for developing and enhancing mobile robotic telepresence systems per se, as well as evaluating the interaction in laboratory and field settings. Finally, the survey outlines a number of design implications for the future of mobile robotic telepresence systems for social interaction.

The use of wearable body sensors for health monitoring is a quickly growing field with the potential of offering a reliable means for clinical and remote health management. This includes both real-time monitoring and health trend monitoring with the aim to detect/predict health deterioration and also to act as a prevention tool. The aim of this systematic review was to provide a qualitative synthesis of studies using wearable body sensors for health monitoring. The synthesis and analysis have pointed out a number of shortcomings in prior research. Major shortcomings are demonstrated by the majority of the studies adopting an observational research design, too small sample sizes, poorly presented, and/or non-representative participant demographics (i.e., age, gender, patient/healthy). These aspects need to be considered in future research work.

Smart home environments have a significant potential to provide for long-term monitoring of users with special needs in order to promote the possibility to age at home. Such environments are typically equipped with a number of heterogeneous sensors that monitor both health and environmental parameters. This paper presents a framework called E-care@home, consisting of an IoT infrastructure, which provides information with an unambiguous, shared meaning across IoT devices, end-users, relatives, health and care professionals and organizations. We focus on integrating measurements gathered from heterogeneous sources by using ontologies in order to enable semantic interpretation of events and context awareness. Activities are deduced using an incremental answer set solver for stream reasoning. The paper demonstrates the proposed framework using an instantiation of a smart environment that is able to perform context recognition based on the activities and the events occurring in the home.

IntroductionOur aging population presents new challenges for the economy and healthcare systems particularly as the number of caregivers per elderly is expected to decrease (e.g. Acosta-Calderon, 2011;Michaud et al., 2007; United Nations, 2006). The fields of telemedicine and telecare have the potential to provide solutions which are particularly attractive for countries with low population densities. In such countries, social isolation could decrease the possibility of elderly people to remain independent and therefore, increase their need for institutional care. While technology can be of help, the uptake of solutions will be highly dependent on the conviction that the technology meets the needs of elderly as well as primary and secondary caregivers while maintaining adequate quality of care. In order to ensure that developed solutions meet the needs of a diverse group of end users, a common approach is to perform extensive end user evaluations to assess the attitude from elderly and/or caregivers. The caregiver and healthcare professionals in particular are an important group as their willingness to accept new technology is determinant in providing the technology to the elderly and ensuring that it is used. In this regards it is therefore important to consider the high variations in professions and roles of primary caregivers when assessing their feedback. In addition, within the different professional roles, there are also differences that depend on experience, age, work processes and tools, exposure to technology etc.In this study we consider an organizational perspective in the evaluation of a technology solution which has not yet penetrated the market but is seen as a close to market solution, if meeting the requirements of end-users (primary and secondary). The system that is evaluated is Giraff, a system for social robotic telepresence. The Giraff in Fig. 1 provides a means for achieving remote communication between two parties. The communication shares similarities with a traditional phone call, i.e. a call is made and this is either accepted or rejected by the owner of the robot. On one end, there is a 163 cm high robot and on the other end there is a client interface from which a remote user can pilot the robot while speaking through a microphone and a web camera. The Giraff unit consists of a screen and web camera that are mounted on a tilt unit attached to the robotic base. .The Giraff also has its own charging station to which the remote user docks before terminating a call. The owner of a Giraff is not required to have any technological knowledge since the handling of the Giraff is done remotely, (see Fig. 2). INS FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 In the evaluation study of the Giraff robot, we consider three categories of primary caregivers (audiologists, nurses and occupational therapists). Within each category we focus on two groups, teachers and students. The evaluation is conducted by presenting a video where a scenario in which Giraff was used to communicate with an elderly was shown to the various evaluat...

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This article reports on the EU project ExCITE with specific focus on the technical development of the telepresence platform over a period of 42 months. The aim of the project was to assess the robustness and validity of the mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) system Giraff as a means to support elderly people and to foster their social interaction and participation. Embracing the idea of user-centered product refinement, the robot was tested over long periods of time in real homes. As such, the system development was driven by a strong involvement of elderly people and their caregivers but also by technical challenges associated with deploying the robot in real-world contexts. The results of the 42-months’ long evaluation is a system suitable for use in homes rather than a generic system suitable, for example, in office environments.

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In this paper, we focus on spatial formations when interacting via mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) systems. Previous research has found that those who used a MRP system to make a remote visit (pilot users) tended to use different spatial formations from what is typical in humanhuman interaction. In this paper, we present the results of a study where a pilot user interacted with ten elderly via a MRP system. Intentional deviations from known accepted spatial formations were made in order to study their effect on interaction quality from the local user perspective. Using a retrospective interviews technique, the elderly commented on the interaction and confirmed the importance of adhering to acceptable spatial configurations. The results show that there is a mismatch between pilot user behaviour and local user preference and that it is important to evaluate a MRP system from two perspectives, the pilot user's and the local user's.