H2020 MARIO - Managing active and healthy aging with use of caring service robots.

Ethics lead: Dr Heike Felzmann (2015-2018)

Project researcher: Dr Mark Ryan

The project focused on the development of the care robot MARIO to address the challenges experienced by persons living with dementia. It brought together partners from across Europe, with Ireland, UK and Italy as empirical trial sites in different healthcare settings. The goal was to develop an acceptable care robot for persons with dementia that could mitigate loneliness and engage the older person in enjoyable and beneficial activities. The ethics-related work included the development of an ethics framework, led by University of Galway (formerly NUI Galway), the development of a set of ethics checklists for the robot development process, and the evaluation of ethical elements of the work. The work resulted in a number of academic journal and conference publications. For more information: http://www.mario-project.eu/portal/#