Probabilistic Estimation of Human Interaction Needs in Context of a Robotic Assistance in Geriatrics

The key purpose of assistance robots is to help people coping with work-related or everyday tasks. To ensure an intuitive and effective support by an assistance robot, its expectation conform behavior is essential. In particular, when using assistance robots in geriatrics to assist elderly patients, special attention to the human-robot interaction should be paid. In order to help elderly patients maintain their independence and abilities as much as possible, the robot should only intervene when its support is needed. Therefore, the continuous estimation of the patient's need for interaction is of particular importance. For enabling suitable models to estimate this need, we elaborate the use of Bayesian Networks. The analysis of our results seems promising, yielding a robust and practical approach.