GIVING-A-HAND - Human-centered design of a small, counter-top, robotic kitchen assistant for elderly and disabled persons

GIVING-A-HAND

  To reduce the potential healthcare costs arising from a rapidly aging industrial world population, the problem of sustaining independent living for the elderly and persons with low to high levels of disabilities must be addressed. Using the kitchen as a microcosmic design space for the residential environment, the proposed design solution is the development of the GIVING-A-HAND system, a low cost, modular system of aids that relies on domotic, telematic, and robotic technologies to provide more affordable and universally accessible solutions to elderly and disabled persons. This paper presents the system concept and the results of interviews with elderly and people with medium to high level functional disabilities, which prioritized and refined requirements for the robotic component of the system: a small, counter-top mobile robot, “Addams Hand” that users can remotely control to interact with typical kitchen appliances.