French robotics and automation manufacturer RoboSoft has introduced a home-assistance robot designed to assist in home care of the elderly.
RoboLAB10 comes in two versions—one designed to supply physical assistance to elderly patients who have difficulty moving themselves or doing physical tasks around the house. The other is designed to assist those with cognitive difficulties due to Alzheimers disease or other disorders.
RoboSoft demonstrated the units at the recent World Congress on Geriatrics and Gerontology in Paris.
The robots were developed with the support of grants from the French National Research Agency and National Solidarity Fund for Autonomy, a group that promotes the interests of the elderly. Development was done with a number of academic and research institutions, primarily the ISIR (Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique), a research laboratory at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.
ISIR’s focus is on artificial perception, visual, sound and haptic feedback and control for machines.
RobuLAB10 was designed to be open and highly mutable by other researchers, especially its operating software, which is based on RoboSoft’s robuBOX control development applications.
Rehabilitative assistance has tremendous potential to cut costs and improve the consistency of care, according to a recent report in Robotics Business Review. However, the report found, rehabilitative robotics are still so early in development that few practical systems exist and none have yet proven themselves in long-term clinical trials, the report found. As a result, the market for rehabilitative assistance robotics systems is still tiny to nonexistent.
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