Welcome to MoRobAE - A Workshop on Mobile Robot Assistants for the Elderly

ICRA 2019 Edition

The full program is now available

All around the world, the increasing size of the senior population combined with small population growth bring a decline in the number of people of working age who support the costs of the system, and a lack of resources to treat patients and to provide quality care. Mobile robotics is one alternative to address these issues.

The main focus of this workshop is putting together researchers interested in the design of mobile social and assistive robots for the elderly and letting them share and learn more about their respective progress and challenges. Many initiatives all around the world, large or small, have or are addressing this topic from different perspectives (e.g., applications, user-centric design or assessment, technology development), and still important issues need to be addressed for robots to be deployed to assist the elderly in daily activities.

The targeted outcome of the workshop is to acquire a global view of what is being done and who is interested in the area of robot assistants for the elderly, to help coordinate the scientific effort in this area.

We therefore encourage researchers that want to discuss such projects to partipate in our workshop, which will be held during ICRA 2019 in Montréal, Québec, Canada in May 2019.

Submissions are now open! To submit your work, please consult our Call for participation.

Accepted submissions will be posted on the workshop web site (open to all) and ArXiV. The authors of the accepted submissions will be invited to submit a paper for a Special issue of PALADYN Journal of Behavioral Robotics.

Topics

Topics discussed at the workshop will include but are not limited to:

• Telepresence robotics for remote assistance
• Robot hardware and software design for seniors
• Sensing capabilities required for seniors-robot interaction
• Autonomous decision-making for robot assistants
• User-centered robot design in a socially and economically responsible fashion
• Qualitative and quantitative approaches for evaluating the experience and impact of robots with seniors
• Outcomes of human-robot interaction pilot studies with seniors
• Long-term autonomy and deployment
• Robot communication and interaction design

Proposed Schedule

• Part 1 (90 min): Presentation of research initiatives and projects (including invited talks, spotlight talks and oral presentations, posters)
• Part 2 (60 min): Open discussion (a.k.a. bull session) on robot assistants for the elderly
• Part 3 (30 min): Roadmapping - gathering ideas on future projects, research directions and potential partnerships

Organizers

• François Michaud, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada
• Adriana Tapus, ENSTA ParisTech, France
• François Ferland, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada
• Goldie Nejat, University of Toronto, Canada
• Eva Barrett, NUI Galway, Ireland
• Dympna Casey, NUL Galway, Ireland