A Safety Concept for Service-Robots Operating in Nursing Homes

Abstract

The next years will put more and more focus on the application of service robots in elderly care, especially nursing homes, to meet the “elderly wave” and at the same time be able to provide high-level, individual care of the residents. However, new challenges appear when introducing service robots in an environment where residents with impaired cognitive skills, like dementia, coexist with the service robots. This, especially, due to the fact that the residents mostly cannot, and formally, are not responsible for themselves. Thus, any accident will per definition, be the robot's responsibility. Unfortunately, there is a lack of standards and best practice about how to establish a safe and harmonic environment where dementia people and service robots coexist and collaborate. Unlike industrial robot installations, both the physical and interperceptual risks must be assessed when introducing service robots to nursing homes. This, because fear can cause unwanted reactions from residents, which in turn can create new risks. This paper addresses the complexity of performing risk assessment for service robots operating in coexistence with dementia residents in nursing homes. Both physical and interperceptual risks are included. Based upon the traditional ISO analysis, an extended method is suggested to minimize the unavoidable, residual safety risk.