Collaborative Research Project within the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Commission

Philips Electronics BV, Netherland
NEC Europe Ltd., UK
OFFIS - Institut für Informatik, Germany
Stiching Novay, Netherlands
Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo, Spain
FATRONIK - Tecnalia, Spain
Fundación Andaluza de Servicios Sociales, Spain
Wany Robotics, France

February 2010 to January 2013

Due to increasing mobility and the ageing society the demand for care will increase significantly, leading to high costs and unrealistic manpower demands. Florence will alleviate this by keeping elderly independent much longer by providing care and coaching services, supported by robots. This will greatly improve the efficiency in care and reduce costs. The second problem addressed by Florence is the acceptance of robots by elderly. For this purpose the project adopts a user-centric approach, by starting with focus-group sessions, having lab-test, and evaluating the services living labs.

The Florence consortium contains partners from the complete value chain: robot vendors, care and service providers, consumer electronics, and communication technology as well as health technology vendors. The consortium positions the service robot as a consumer device, supporting various lifestyle services. In particular the following services will be evaluated in the project:

• Social Connectedness: provide access to the social networks, including web-2.0 and synchronous communication tools
• Coaching: give feedback on specific activities like physical exercises, and advise on activities of daily life
• Care support: log care-related activities at home that are shared among professional or volunteer caretakers.
• Safety: use the robot as additional ears and eyes in comfort or safety situations, controlled by service providers or the elderly users.

NEC initiated this project and act as Technical Manager. Besides this NEC has the leadership in the overall Architecture workpackage.

NECs interest is multifolded:

• Creation of a privacy aware home environment which comprises a home infrastructure, a multi-purpose robot and their communication technologies towards a remote service provider.
• Investigation in a service gateway as a prominent entity in the home environment, which relays network technologies, application logic and management functionalities between the home and the remote service provider.
• Development of OSGi based tool for remote management of devices inside the home environment
• Augment the home environment with a platform for smart context handling and actuation management, and its integration into both, the home and robot infrastructure.
• Context enhancement for decision making

Meyer J., Brell M., Hein A., Gessler S.: Personal Assistive Robots for AAL Services at Home - The Florence Point of View; 3rd. IoPTS workshop, Brussels, 2009

For more information please use our contact form.

Official FLORENCE Web Site.