CompanionAble

The CompanionAble Robotics project aims to provide extra help around the house so that the elderly can live semi-independently at home for as long as possible. With a growing aging population, it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide proper care for the large amount of elderly people in industrialized countries. The healthcare sector is multiple steps behind in having the finances and skilled workers to take care of this rapidly increasing number of people in need of care.

CompanionAble will provide that much needed help by using robotics and ambient intelligence technologies. The idea of the project is that the developed robot should support the cognitive stimulation and therapy management. The project’s focus point is to keep it cost-effective to provide an actual solution to the problem right now.

Hector, as the assistive robot is called, will respond when you call out to it. Hector will keep track of your daily routine and remind you of important events that are coming up, such as when a person needs to take his/her medicine. Additionally, it has a fall detection system which can evaluate the seriousness of the injuries when a person falls down and which emergency steps need to be taken.

Hector was selected to meet the EU president because the project was chosen as only one of two selected initiatives out of 50. This inficates how highly the project is regarded.

The CompanionAble project is co-funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme