Intelligent Robotics for Elderly Assistance in Hong Kong

Summary

Hong Kong is facing a significant societal challenge - a rapidly aging society. The proportion of the population aged 65 and over in Hong Kong increased from 16.6% in 2005 to 20.1% in 2020. The number of people aged 65 or older worldwide is estimated to reach 1.6 billion by 2050. In terms of quality of life, a major difficulty that many older people experience is a severe limitation in mobility and manipulability in their daily life, resulting in tremendous social and economic challenges. Hence, the investigators propose to develop innovative intelligent robotics systems to improve mobility and manipulability, prevent falls, enhance independence, and improve the quality of life of older adults. In particular, the investigators propose a User-Centric Co-creation (UC3) approach to developing novel intelligent wearable robots to enhance mobility and manipulability. The UC3 approach will start with a psycho-social study to identify the individual needs of older adults for achieving mobility and manipulability, which then leads to determining kinesiology-based design parameters for personalized wearable robots. The robots will be developed based on novel hybrid soft/rigid structures integrated with intelligent sensors, distributed actuators, and cooperative control methods. The robotic devices will be tested with elderly users in a user- user-centric environment for evaluation and continuous improvement. The investigators have conducted preliminary studies of the proposed approach. The results of the preliminary studies have clearly shown the feasibility as well as the novelty of the proposed approach. It can be stated confidently that our multidisciplinary team of experts in engineering, gerontology and medicine will be able to work with the elderly community and potential users to successfully deliver the project objectives. Furthermore, an Impact Committee, consisting of leaders in Hong Kong's elder community, elderly care organizations and related industries, has been proposed. It will advise and facilitate the research team to ensure the maximum impact of the research results and successful technology transfer. Commercialization efforts will be embedded in every phase of the project to ensure that the results will both benefit the elderly community and contribute to the economic development of Hong Kong. The outcomes of this project will place Hong Kong at the frontier of global robotics research and technology, provide critical technology to transform the elderly care services in Hong Kong, and create opportunities for training the next generation of scientists and engineers in robotics technology in Hong Kong.

Conditions

• Sarcopenia

Interventions

DEVICE

Intelligent robotics for elderly assistance - sarcopenia

Participants will use the robotics system and integrated environment to perform daily self-care to uncover problems in functionality, usability, and acceptance of the robotic device prototype. The system, connected to mobile apps and the Internet, will serve as a platform to measure and record data on how the participants engage in pre-specified activities. The experiment will last six months, and the outcome will be assessed pre- and post-implementation for comparison and validation. The major testing criteria include the design specifications for functionalities and reliability, user experiences, system security and privacy.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The University of Hong Kong

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

65 Years

Max Age

75 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-11-01

Primary Completion

2025-06-30

Completion

2025-10-30

Countries

• Hong Kong

Study Locations