ENABLING AGEING AUTONOMY

The ACCRA solutions are driven by the needs, interests and lifestyles of senior people through personalised and self-adaptable human-robot interaction. The objective of the ACCRA robotic solutions is to improve or maintain the level of autonomy, to secure the daily lives and to promote the maintenance of socialisation of elderly people with loss of autonomy. Elder people can age in better physical and mental health within age-friendly environments. These environments would contribute to have them more socially included, actively participating in their communities’ lives, despite possible losses of autonomy. Robotics can contribute to this age friendly environment. The ACCRA partners focus on three main elderly needs identified during analysis : Mobility, Daily life, and Socialisation.

The ACCRA solution is designed to allow adaptation towards different histories and cultures across the EU and Japan and also a variety of individual perception and preferences and cognitive capabilities. In fact, each of the three applications are or have been co-created in two countries: Mobility Walking in Italy and Netherlands, Daily Life in France and Netherlands and Conversation rehabilitation in Italy and Japan.

The evaluation of resulting robotics applications will include social expectations, safety, and acceptability to end-users (including caregivers). Furthermore, as differences between men and women in how they perceive technology have been reported in several studies, the co-creation and experimentation groups are composed of representatives from both genders. This will help project’s stakeholders to design robots that are accepted by both men and women for end users (elderly) and formal and informal caregivers.