Korian & Korian Foundation, UNIMES and Strate PhD project
How can AI and robotics contribute to improve the quality of life in nursing homes?
Description
Seniors report having a better quality of life when they can stay at home, and many express this wish. This goal becomes challenging when people lose their autonomy, when they live alone and when the environment is not adapted to their condition. Nursing homes allow seniors to maintain social links and receive daily care and support. As the elderly population will become less and less autonomous and will require additional support and care, facilities will have to adapt their model. Regarding the current socially difficult context, improving the quality of life for all the people in nursing homes (residents, staff, relatives) and raising the general awareness about the place and role of the elderly in society are essential issues.
Some people call for new technologies, such as robotics or Artificial Intelligence, for the elderly care. However, the use of robotics in elders’ daily lives is a matter of controversy; as the market grasps new possibilities around people’s loss of autonomy, it is confronted with a legitimate fear of a too fast integration into these fragile ecosystems. Robotics and A.I. transform the relationship between humans and machines, generate new interactions and deeply modify existing ecosystems. In today's context, the act of design applied to digital technologies carries environmental responsibility as well. As the impact of digital technology in the current context of global warming can’t be neglected, all kinds of production must be carefully questioned.
These social and environmental impacts make the act of design very sensitive. Adopting an ethical and critical point of view about robotics and A.I. within people's lives is paramount, to weigh their relevance as well as their limits. It is not so much the technology that must be at the center of the questioning, than its us. The objective of this thesis is thus to understand to what extent, through designing new interactions enabled by these technologies, and through an ethical and contextualized thinking, robotics and A.I. will be able to positively transform the ecologies of aging.
Supervisors
This PhD is conducted at Korian an Korian Foundation alongside Marie-Anne Fourrier and Fabrice Flottes de Pouzols, on the uses of robotics with elderly people and caregivers in nursing homes. The academic supervision is followed by Stéphane Vial and Thomas Watkin from Projekt, the social innovation laboratory of the University of Nîmes and Ioana Ocnarescu from Robotics by Design Lab and Strate.