Domestic robots could make a big difference to our lives, including helping us to live well and to stay independent as we get older. However, while these robots work well in research labs, they haven’t yet made much difference to our lives. One of the reasons for this is that research labs are very different from our homes: while labs are spacious, and free of obstacles and clutter, most of our homes are definitely not!

This project brings together experts from the fields of robotics, healthcare and architecture to consider what typical residential and care homes are really like, and what this means for robots. This will allow us to write down a set of guidelines that will tell robot developers what they need to bear in mind when they’re building robots in their labs.

In order to test these guidelines, we are making computerised models of typical homes which will allow us to see how different types of robots go about different tasks – but without scratching the furniture, breaking any vases or scaring the cat! When we’re satisfied with the guidelines we’ll publish them, and then we can concentrate on promoting them so that robot developers will begin to build more practical robots that will actually help people.