Data distribution infrastructure and applications for robotic therapy for blind elderly

In recent years, the elderly population has been increasing rapidly and robot therapy for elderly people has been researched. However, there are few common platform for robot therapy for elderly people and few researches on robot therapy for blind elderly people. In this research, we develop a data distribution system for robot therapy for elderly people that collectively manages data on the cloud and promotes data utilization. The development system collects, transfers, and visualizes sensor data related to elderly people with robot interaction. As a case study, we also develop a robot therapy system using conversations for blind elderly people to induce positive mental state. We conducted experiment for three blind elderly and confirmed the feasibility of robot therapy using conversations for blind elderly people.