We decided to found CURA to continue our fantastic experience in CARESSES. Please notice that the CURA Artificial Intelligence has been completely re-designed from scratch following the lesson learned in CARESSES.
CARESSES is a project funded by the European Commission and the Ministry of Internal affairs and Communication of Japan from January 2017 to January 2020, coordinated by the University of Genova in Italy and the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
Briefly, CARESSES is a multidisciplinary project aiming to develop the first robot to care for older people that can adapt to the person’s culture. The CARESSES Artificial Intelligence, integrated with the humanoid robot Pepper developed by SoftBank Robotics, helps older people in various ways. For example, by reminding them to take medicines, encouraging them to lead an active life, helping them stay in touch with friends and family, recognizing emergency situations, or simply helping to diminish the feeling of loneliness through social interaction and conversation. A distinctive sign of CARESSES is that every action is carried out by paying attention to the person’s cultural background.
Check the website caressesrobot.org to see the CARESSES robot in action and know more about the project and the partners involved.
The CARESSES AI has been the subject of an intense experimentation phase with more than thirty nursing home residents (English, Indian or Japanese) in the United Kingdom and Japan. This experimentation phase aimed to evaluate the solutions developed in the project to improve the person’s quality of life and their satisfaction regarding the interaction and reduce the person’s sense of loneliness and the family members’ burden.
An analysis of the questionnaires administered to participants has supported the value of culturally competent assistive robots in improving older adults’ psychological well-being in care settings.
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