What social and environmental considerations are important for socially assistive robotic adoption for pre-frail older adults at home: a scoping review, life cycle assessment and survey

Background

A complex evaluation of robotic adoption for older adults is necessary, given the pressing need to prevent ill health and disability. Critical thinking that incorporates an understanding of sustainability is needed for the future, if assistive robots are to be widely used. This research was undertaken as part of I’MACTIVE, a project that combined emergent technologies for older adults at risk of becoming frail. The aim was to analyse the sustainability of emerging socially assistive robotic technology for use with community dwelling older people and to assess the likelihood of adoption and acceptability.

Methods

The study includes a scoping review of the social and environmental impacts of socially assistive robotics, a life cycle impact evaluation of a robot and potential metrics for assessing its circularity, and a subsequent survey in two stages of the perspectives of older adults on assistive robotics. The evaluation sought to assess the likelihood of adoption, given priorities and perspectives of older people. Framework analysis was used to combine findings.

Results

The review included eight studies, but none addressed the social and environmental features of the robotic implementation in terms of needs of older people. Theories of adoption and acceptance do not yet include life cycle assessments of technologies. The environmental assessment of the TurtleBot4 robot indicated that its global warming potential is estimated at 68–118 kg CO2-eq. The most important components were the printed circuit boards and batteries, together responsible for over 60% of the impacts. The survey demonstrates that older adults are willing to use socially assistive robotics if robots have an appropriate level of function, cost, environmental impact and legal risk.

Conclusions

Socially assistive robotics may benefit some older people but currently the design process inconsistently factors in the values and choices of older people. Nor does it consider the environmental implications of scaling the deployment of robotics in personal residences. Robots have the potential to help with the caregiving and domestic needs of the growing ageing population but need to be sustainably produced and have tangible functional benefit, identified by older people, to be acceptable.