Toward AI-Enabled Commercial Telepresence Robots to Combine Home Care Needs and Affordability

As life expectancy increases, social and health assistance requires sustainable and affordable solutions possibly usable from one’s own domestic environment. In this article, we propose a transformer-based approach combined with a task-planning system and enhanced with AI sub-modules to run on low-cost telepresence robots in order to support more advanced and autonomous assistance services. The proposed system allows to dynamically generate and adapt in autonomy heterogeneous robotic actions according to the information emerged during the interaction. The AI-enhanced telepresence robot was assessed in an unstructured domestic environment by 10 users. The results show an accuracy of more than 95% in the expected robot’s functioning. The participants judged the system efficient, useful and intuitive, and showed a positive inclination to re-use the robot in the future. Such outcomes derive both from a proper coordination among the heterogeneous AI sub-modules in the system and from the fast capability to frequently co-adapt the interaction.