NHoA

Development of a socially intelligent assistance robot to help the elderly relieve loneliness at home.

The Never Home Alone (NHoA) project aims to help seniors by relieving loneliness at home, maintaining healthy habits and encouraging them to interact with the community. The system will also protect, assist and monitor the evolution of each person in a personalised way.

The overall goal of NHoA is to co-design a socially intelligent care robot as a key to patient robustness, adaptability, acceptance and commitment. The NHoA robot will be an embodied support actor who feels the social and emotional environment and intervenes proactively to build an affective relationship with the user.

The project will conceptualise and demonstrate a connected robotic system and some of the following sets of associated services to support the elderly at home in synergy with caregivers.

Eurecat coordinates the project through its Robotics and Automation Unit, which contributes developing the aspects of affective interaction and cognitive robotics of the assistance social robot, and the Digital Health Unit, which offers health surveillance capabilities and behavior change intervention techniques to prevent physical and cognitive impairment.

The NHoA consortium brings together partners with experience in caring for the elderly, along with scientists involved in social, emotional and human robotics, as well as companies with business and research experience in the use of robots for social and medical care. In addition to Eurecat, it is formed by Pablo de Olavide University, the Open University of Catalonia, PAL Robotics, LIGHTHOUSE Disruptive Innovation Group, FUNDESALUD and the Sant Joan de Déu Foundation.