Intelligent Robotics for Elderly Assistance in Hong Kong

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 bee