ROSE project: Service robotics will be a part of nursing in ten years

Finland, like many other western countries, will face a major challenge in the near future: the ageing population will require an increasing amount of ethical high-quality care at a reasonable cost.

Finnish researchers examined the opportunities of using service robots in welfare services for six years in the Robots and the Future of Welfare Services (ROSE) research project funded by the Academy of Finland. In the project, all research and development work was based on users’ needs.

The six-year ROSE project piloted telepresence robots and exoskeleton vests for nurses among other innovations. The overall experiences were positive, but the technological development of robotics has not yet reached the required level in all respects. As part of the project, a roadmap has been published for the sustainable use of nursing robotics on a large scale.

Laurea University of Applied Sciences has participated in the project coordinated by Aalto University. Among other things, the project studied the functionality of telepresence robots in different applications. Many elderly people living at home can already chat with a nurse via video call connection using a tablet. However, a telepresence robot enables the nurse to move around in an elderly person’s apartment, providing them with an overall picture of the situation.

“During the Corona period, for example, we implemented a five-week trial in which grandparents used a robot to communicate with their children and grandchildren,” says Sari Heikkinen, Research Programme Director at Laurea.

“The trial received a lot of positive feedback. The elderly felt that the robot created a sense of safety and that meeting the relatives felt more authentic than in a video call where the participants simply stare at the screen of a phone or tablet. The children felt that the mobile robot gave them a broader view of their parents’ overall situation.”

Read more about Robots and the Future of Welfare Services – A Finnish Roadmap (aaltodoc.aalto.fi).

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