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Background Developing new assistive technologies is a challenge for an ageing society and a possible response to the needs of older people in the care process and a challenge to promote autonomous living. The interaction between elderly and robots may depend on the choice of activities that robots can developed and the how important it is for older people. Social Assistive Robots can contribute to a positive impact in elderly well-being and active ageing. Methods 31 elderly residents (10 men and 21 women) in a Portuguese nursing home were interviewed about their routines and interests. They were also assessed during 6 weeks, to evaluate interactions and activities initiative and involvement, using an scale adapted by authors from a Bertram and Pascal scale. This assessment was made by direct observation. The professionals and the director in the nursing home were also interviewed. Research results The adopted methodology allowed to identify the needs and interests of the elderly, and to classify the participants on the levels of social interactions, initiative and involvement in activities and social participation. Conclusions Some social, cognitive and physical activities were selected to be developed by a socially assisted robot and the evaluation process used in this research methodology will be used to evaluate the results of the intervention with a robot in social assistive domains, developed in a European Project INTERREG (EUROAGE).

The relevance in the study of interaction between elderly and robots may depend on the choice of activities that robots can be developed to perform and the assessment of their impact and importance for older people. This research requires coordinated research between computer engineers and specialists in the humanities and social sciences. Being a recent research area, it is particularly relevant to carefully select the behavioural variables to be analyzed, the methodology adopted and the instruments that allow for a rigorous evaluation. Based on these assumptions, the present study aims to develop Innovative Initiatives for the Promotion of Active Aging in the EUROACE Region. The authors propose an appropriate methodology and instruments to evaluate the impact of the human-robot interaction in the promotion of a more active aging in a group of elderly in a nursing home. The analyzed variables focus on the involvement of the elderly in the activities, their capacity for initiative and to establish social interactions, indicators of well-being and a proactive attitude. The methodology of the study is mixed (qualitative and quantitative), organized as an exploratory case study. Data collection is based on naturalistic observation but variables are quantitatively assessed in a pre/post-test design. The research design identified the narratives of the elderly and the staff of the institution regarding the needs and interests of each elderly person, classified the participants according to the levels of prevailing social interactions, involvement and initiative in activities, considered important variables for an active ageing and, in this sense, demonstrated its adequacy to be used to evaluate the results of the intervention using social assistive robots.

This paper presents and discusses ethical issues related with the interaction of elderly people with robots while playing cognitive games. Four games were developed from classical nursing homes cognitive games, to incrementally increase its difficulty. The last one does include interaction with a robot. Several ethical issues were tackled to obtain a proper system with robots: those ethical issues were raised during the design phase and the interaction with the elders. As example of ethical issues tackled: beneficience - do not harm, and the deception and infantilisation of elderly. The games are based in objects with different shapes and colours to be positioned by the elder in pre-defined positions of a 3x3 arena, on the floor. The system then interacts with the elder given him/her the respective score, after performing image processing techniques to the image of the arena. The game with the robot consists to knock down objects in the arena, by pushing them outside the area using a car-like tele-operated robot, by the elders. The system was validated in two nursing homes, by performing experiments in the last months, and it is ethically proper.