A Multirobot System in an Assisted Home Environment to Support the Elderly in Their Daily Lives
Publicated to:Sensors. 22 (20): - 2022-01-01 22(20), DOI: 10.3390/s22207983
Authors: Barber R; Ortiz FJ; Garrido S; Calatrava-Nicolás FM; Mora A; Prados A; Vera-Repullo JA; Roca-González J; Méndez I; Mozos ÓM
Affiliations
Abstract
The increasing isolation of the elderly both in their own homes and in care homes has made the problem of caring for elderly people who live alone an urgent priority. This article presents a proposed design for a heterogeneous multirobot system consisting of (i) a small mobile robot to monitor the well-being of elderly people who live alone and suggest activities to keep them positive and active and (ii) a domestic mobile manipulating robot that helps to perform household tasks. The entire system is integrated in an automated home environment (AAL), which also includes a set of low-cost automation sensors, a medical monitoring bracelet and an Android application to propose emotional coaching activities to the person who lives alone. The heterogeneous system uses ROS, IoT technologies, such as Node-RED, and the Home Assistant Platform. Both platforms with the home automation system have been tested over a long period of time and integrated in a real test environment, with good results. The semantic segmentation of the navigation and planning environment in the mobile manipulator for navigation and movement in the manipulation area facilitated the tasks of the later planners. Results about the interactions of users with the applications are presented and the use of artificial intelligence to predict mood is discussed. The experiments support the conclusion that the assistance robot correctly proposes activities, such as calling a relative, exercising, etc., during the day, according to the user’s detected emotional state, making this is an innovative proposal aimed at empowering the elderly so that they can be autonomous in their homes and have a good quality of life. © 2022 by the authors.
Keywords
Quality index
Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel
The work has been published in the journal Sensors due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2022, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Analytical Chemistry.
From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from World Citations from Scopus Elsevier, it yields a value for the Field-Weighted Citation Impact from the Scopus agency: 1.36, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: ESI Nov 14, 2024)
This information is reinforced by other indicators of the same type, which, although dynamic over time and dependent on the set of average global citations at the time of their calculation, consistently position the work at some point among the top 50% most cited in its field:
- Field Citation Ratio (FCR) from Dimensions: 11.79 (source consulted: Dimensions Jul 2025)
Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-07-09, the following number of citations:
- Scopus: 17
Impact and social visibility
Leadership analysis of institutional authors
This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: Sweden.
There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: Last Author (MARTINEZ MOZOS, OSCAR).