Patient@home compriseses several research activities aimed at developing robots and technology that can activate, motivate, support, and assist patients in their daily activities - especially in terms of reducing the dependency on caregivers. As part of that aim, and to make it visible-making, University of Southern Denmark, Danish Technological Institute, Welfare Tech, and Innovation Network RoboCluster have purchased the ground-breaking, self-propelled robot Care-O-Bot 3 from Fraunhofer IPA. The robot is equipped with a robotic arm from Universal Robots.

Starting Point and Goal

Care-O-Bot 3 is already able to independently move around the home while it performs simple service tasks. In Patient@home, these properties are continuously expanded through the project's research and innovation performance and the robot will therefore continuously be able to engage in scenarios of increasing complexity. In Patient@home the primary focus will be on developing and mature properties in three main areas:

• Fetching various objects, e.g. a glass of water or food

• Assistive tasks, e.g. assistance to get out of bed

• Assistance in connection with rehabilitation and retraining

Taking into account the robot's ability to "see", "hear", and "speak", the vision is that the robot will eventually be able to perform many different tasks and thus form a natural part of a patient's daily life at home.

Expected Results

Through continuous demonstrations of the latest project results from Patient@home, the intention of Care-O-Bot 3 is to give hospitals, municipalities, nursing homes, patients, and enterprises specific insight into what the future of robotic assistants may potentially offer. This means that enterprises have a unique opportunity to experience by themselves the potential to develop new products or services on the basis of the results. Expectations are that at the end of the Patient@home project period Care-O-Bot 3 has been a direct or indirect catalyst for a major number of new products or services to the health sector.