“We believe that people need affordable solutions that are bespoke to their needs, and which provide maximal value by being modular in their functionality.” 

Over the course of the project we ran an observational study to improve our knowledge of the facility and of staff and residents’ interactions, three co-design sessions where we worked with the residents on their current methods of hydration and discussed any problems they had, then presented our initial prototypes and what they would change, and then the final prototype development followed by a day-long live deployment in the Viewpoint Care Home.  

From our observational study we also noted that to properly deploy a robot in a care home there should be a greater use of simulation; however, accurate 3D models of this type of facility cannot be found at present and so through working with Viewpoint we began conducting a full 3D mapping of the Viewpoint buildings. 

We found that there was a sense of trepidation to interacting with robots, in our first co-design the Viewpoint residents expressed a real sense of unease when discussing robots. But come the second and third where they had worked with us and discussed their desire for a robot and we had shown the different iterations there developed a greater sense of acceptance of robots as the project went on. RoboBrico robotic platform navigated around the central area that residents spent time and was able to distribute water to residents who wanted it over the course of a day. 

The RoboBrico project allowed us to explore how a robot can be used in a care home by building a constructive and collaborative relationship with the staff and residents taking into account their range of views on robots and more importantly what they would gain from both the acceptance for the usage of robots and from the actual robot. 

Summary 

The project delivered a two-module robotic platform that could be safely deployed in a care home; it could map the area in which it was to work and autonomously navigate around that area; it also allowed residents to fill up their cups with water and provide potentially much needed hydration.  

Insights 

When working with and in a care home there are a multitude of factors to take into account which include: 

• Residents might be enthusiastic to work with the researchers and use the robotic platform but their families might not be: how to navigate that type of situation proved challenging.  

• The IT systems used by care homes are often antiquated as we discovered when we began trying to interface with them. For example their PCs ran on Windows 7 as did their water monitoring system. This was upgraded in the middle of our deployment leading to considerable issues with data recording. 

• We did not manage to achieve the original number of participants which we had wanted to, this in part was due to an overestimate of the number of residents within the care home that use the area where we wished to deploy the robot and of the number who would consent to be part of the work. 

• Due to concerns from the care home the autonomous navigation was not used during testing and the robot was remote controlled. 

Achievements 

1. A functional and deployable robotic platform which will form the base for future grant applications. 

2. An excellent working relationship with the Viewpoint Care Home where they are keen to work with us on future projects. 

3. A set of 3D maps of the Viewpoint facility.  

We developed a modular robotic robot which can then be split into two separate modules: 

1. The base module which was developed first and refined over the course of the project. This module was designed to be agnostic to whichever module was fitted on top of it.  

1. The base contained a LIDAR sensor for mapping and autonomous navigation as well as the capacity for further cameras to be connected if required.  

2. It ran on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B initially before being changed to a ROCK 4 Model C+ Single Board and utilised several standard ROS libraries as well as a set of custom ones designed by our engineer. 

3. Each section could pull power from the base if required and the base had a carry capacity of 8.5kg.  

4. The electronics were importantly housed in a waterproof (IP65 rating) container to reduce the change of damage either from the hydration platform or an accidental spillage from the residents.  

2. The hydration module was developed iteratively over the course of the project being refined after each of the co-design workshops. 

1. Initial iterations trialed a separate unit pulled behind the platform which was deemed more spacious but difficult to control and undesirable by the care home. 

2. The residents stressed the desire to be able to control the amount of water given and so a tap with variable volumes was incorporated which was linked to the control board to count the amount of water used. 

3. As temperature was also a concern, so the water was stored in an insulated compartment of the robot. 

Overall, a functional robotic platform was created and deployed in the Viewpoint Care home as can be seen in figure 1. 

A set of 3D maps of the Viewpoint care home have been created (examples can be seen in figure 2 and 3). These are being expanded on to create a complete map of the entire facility with the aim of both providing Viewpoint with an important asset for their future planning as well as a testing platform that we hope can be shared within the EMERGENCE network for all robotics groups to use.