The CARESSES EU-Japan Project: Making Assistive Robots Culturally Competent

Abstract

The nursing literature shows that cultural competence is an important requirement for effective healthcare. We claim that personal assistive robots should likewise be culturally competent, that is, they should be aware of general cultural characteristics and of the different forms they take in different individuals, and take these into account while perceiving, reasoning, and acting. The CARESSES project is an Europe-Japan collaborative effort that aims at designing, developing and evaluating culturally competent assistive robots. These robots will be able to adapt the way they behave, speak and interact to the cultural identity of the person they assist. This paper describes the approach taken in the CARESSES project, its initial steps, and its future plans.

An Ontology-driven ECHONET Lite Adaptation Layer for Smart Homes

“…The implemented service gateway is the core component to support the interaction between the robot and smart environment in Ref. [26] as a part of the CARESSES project [27].…”

Emerging Cognitive Intervention Technologies to Meet the Needs of an Aging Population: A Systematic Review

“…Interestingly, little is known about the impact cultural background can have on this form of training. Since culture is a way of social life for people, it influences lifestyle, personal identity and one's relationship with others (Bruno et al, 2017). A cultural innovation can trigger changes in general cognitive capabilities (Bender, 2019).…”

A review and comparison of ontology-based approaches to robot autonomy

“…After applying this criterion, the list was reduced to 21 articles, which correspond to five different projects: KnowRob (Tenorth and Beetz 2009), IEEE-ORA (Schlenoff et al 2012), ROSETTA (Stenmark and Malec 2013), CARESSES (Bruno, Chong, et al 2017b), and RehabRobo-Onto (Dogmus, Erdem, and Patoglu 2019). This set of works, was enlarged by other four ones extracted from one of the surveys (Thosar et al 2018) explained along the Section 1.…”

“…CARESSES 29 is an international research project whose goal is to design the first robots that can assist older people and adapt to the culture of the individual they are taking care of (Bruno, Chong, et al 2017b), (Bruno, Chong, et al 2017a). The robots are expected to help the users in many ways including reminding them to take their medication, encouraging them to keep active, helping them keep in touch with family and friends.…”