I-SUPPORT · ICT-Supported Bath Robots

The I-SUPPORT project envisions the development and integration of an innovative, modular, ICT-supported service robotics system that supports and enhances older adults’ motion and force abilities and assists them in successfully, safely and independently completing the entire sequence of bathing tasks, such as properly washing their back, their upper parts, their lower limbs, their buttocks and groin, and to effectively use the towel for drying purposes. Advanced modules of cognition, sensing, context awareness and actuation will be developed and seamlessly integrated into the service robotics system to enable the robotic bathing system to adapt to the frail elderly population’ capabilities and the frail elderly to interact in a master-slave mode, thus, performing bathing activities in an intuitive and safe way. Adaptation and integration of state-of-the-art, cost-effective, soft-robotic manipulators will provide the hardware constituents, which, together with advanced human-robot force/compliance control that will be developed within the proposed project, will form the basis for a safe physical human-robot interaction that complies with the most up-to-date safety standards. Human behavioural, sociological, safety, ethical and acceptability aspects, as well as financial factors related to the proposed service robotic infrastructure will be thoroughly investigated and evaluated so that the I-SUPPORT end result is a close-to-market prototype, applicable to realistic living settings.