Socially pertinent robots in gerontological healthcare
Social robots in an environment populated with humans is a technological horizon that is simultaneously so close and so far. Indeed, even if there are a number of companion robots in the market, the social skills of these robots are extremely limited and overcoming these limitations raises many scientific, technological, social and methodological challenges. We aim to develop the technology enabling robotic platforms to be involved in multi-party situated conversations. On one side, this requires perception capabilities that provide robustness against visual occlusions, speaker overlap, noise, interferences and clutter. On the other side, situated conversations requires the robot to take the appropriate actions, regarding the environment and the behavior of the people in it. We will validate the proposed technology in healthcare applicative scenarios, and in particular in a day hospital for elderly people. In this context, the goal of the robotic platform could be to reduce the patient’s stress and ease the waiting, to attend patients and accompany them to the next scheduled medical appointment, or to signal demands and anomalies to the medical personnel.