A Systematic Review of Research into how Robotic Technology can help older people

Abstract Background The world population is ageing rapidly with the percentage of older adults increasing to 24% by 2030 from 10% in 2000. Therefore cost of providing aged care has been growing, especially in countries such as Japan, the USA and Australia. For example, the average need for long-term care was estimated at three years for people turning 65 in United States of America at 2005 ( Kemper, Komisar, & Alecxih, 2005 ). Robotic technology has been identified as being able to help older adults to live independently, and is emerging as an innovative approach to assist older adults directly, for example, robotic wheelchairs and indirectly for instance providing support to stakeholders, including caregivers. This study looks at the research undertaken in robotic technologies as it is applied to aged care. Method A systematic literature review of peer-reviewed literature published in Medline, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, PubMed, Scopus and SpringerLINK, from 1 January 2000 to mid-July 2015 was undertaken. Results An initial set of 8533 studies was refined to 58 studies. Nine robot types were identified in addressing aged care problems, including companion, manipulator service, telepresence, rehabilitation, health monitoring, reminder, entertainment, domestic, and fall detection/prevention robots. These robot types have been applied to eight key problem areas in aged care, namely social isolation, dependent living, physical or cognitive impairment, mobility problems, poor health monitoring, lack of recreation, memory problems and fall problems. The frequency of research into each robot type was analysed, with the finding some robotic technologies have received more attention (e.g., companion) while other types that can assist older adults with independent living (e.g., cooking and bathing) were not as comprehensively researched. Conclusion This literature review examines research into robots and how they can help in aged care with nine categories of robot identified. The literature establishes that some types of robots have gained significant attention from researchers with respect to their application in various problem areas while other robot types have not. The purpose of this paper is to review the studies and identify current outcomes.