The CARESSES EU-Japan project: making assistive robots culturally competent
This addresses the need for culturally aware assistive robots in healthcare, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing cultural competence concepts in nursing.
The CARESSES project tackles the problem of making assistive robots culturally competent by enabling them to adapt behavior, speech, and interaction based on cultural identity, with plans for design, development, and evaluation.
The nursing literature shows that cultural competence is an important requirement for effective healthcare. We claim that personal assistive robots should likewise be culturally competent, that is, they should be aware of general cultural characteristics and of the different forms they take in different individuals, and take these into account while perceiving, reasoning, and acting. The CARESSES project is an Europe-Japan collaborative effort that aims at designing, developing and evaluating culturally competent assistive robots. These robots will be able to adapt the way they behave, speak and interact to the cultural identity of the person they assist. This paper describes the approach taken in the CARESSES project, its initial steps, and its future plans.