People are living significantly longer lives than in previous decades. Life expectancy in the world today has increased by two decades since 1950 (from 48 years in 1950–55 to 68 years in 2005-10). During the current half century, the UN Population Division projects global life expectancy to rise further to 76 years. Based on the report from the UN Population Division, the aging population will rise to 400 million. This will result on a tremendous shortage on staff and qualified healthcare personnel in the near future. There is a growing necessity for new technologies, such as Robotics, that can assist the elderly in their daily living, fill much-needed healthcare positions and low-skill service-oriented roles.
The exploration of robotics for aging society is needed much more than ever. The Robotics for Aging Healthcare Workshop of ICOST 2013 aims to bring together researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians working on robotics for aging population to share their findings and discuss how to advance the state-of-the-art in this emerging and important area.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:
- Interaction and collaboration among robots, humans, and environments
- Robots to assist the elderly and persons with disabilities
- Socially assistive robots to improve quality of life
- Affective and cognitive sciences for socially interactive robots
- Personal robots for the home
- Social acceptance and impact in the society
- Robot ethics in human society
- Safety in robots working in human spaces
- Human augmentation, rehabilitation, and medical robots
- Robot applications in education, entertainment, and gaming
Workshop Date: To-be-announced
IMPORTANT DATES - WORKSHOP:
o Deadline for submissions: February 20th, 2013
o Notification of acceptance: March 20th, 2013
o Camera ready papers and registration: April 12, 2013
SUBMISSIONS:
o Up to 8 pages long (extended abstracts and preliminary results papers welcome)
ORGANIZERS:
o Prof Hisato Kobayashi (Hosei University, Japan)
o John-John Cabibihan (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
o Tan Yeow Kee (Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore)
