CompanionAble adresses the issues of social inclusion and homecare of persons suffering from chronic cognitive disabilities prevalent among the elderly, a rapidly increasing population group. Those people need support of carers and are at risk of social exclusion, yet this problem not well addressed by ICT technology, but would lead to a social and economical pressure for staying at home as long as possible.

The main unique selling point of the CompanionAble project lies in the synergetic combination of the strengths of a mobile robotic companion with the advantages of a stationary smart home, since neither of those approaches alone can accomplish the demanding tasks to be solved. Positive effects of both individual solutions shall be combined to demonstrate how the synergies between a stationary smart home solution and an embodied mobile robot companion can make the care and the care person's interaction with her assistive system significantly better.

Starting with a profound requirements engineering for ICT-supported care and therapy management for the care persons, basic technologies for multimodal user observation and human-machine interaction will provide the fundamentals for the development of a stationary smart home assistive system and a mobile robot assistant, building the cornerstones of the overall system integrating the promising solutions of both parts. Substantial support comes from the research activities focusing on an architectural framework, allowing such a complex care scenario solution be achievable. After the realization of the respective scenarios, long lasting field experiments will be carried out to evaluate and test the system, and both scenarios can be evaluated to show their strength and weaknesses. This will initiate the development of an overall, integrated care scenario (smart home with embedded robot companion).
The realization of this integrated care concept is to be seen as the in-principal vision of CompanionAble.

https://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/261109-abadii.pdf

• Western Europe and North America

• Older persons
• People with disabilities

CompanionAble adresses the issues of social inclusion and homecare of persons suffering from chronic cognitive disabilities prevalent among the elderly, a rapidly increasing population group. Those people need support of carers and are at risk of social exclusion, yet this problem not well addressed by ICT technology, but would lead to a social and economical pressure for staying at home as long as possible. The main unique selling point of the CompanionAble project lies in the synergetic combination of the strengths of a mobile robotic companion with the advantages of a stationary smart home, since neither of those approaches alone can accomplish the demanding tasks to be solved. Positive effects of both individual solutions shall be combined to demonstrate how the synergies between a stationary smart home solution and an embodied mobile robot companion can make the care and the care person's interaction with her assistive system significantly better.