A New Semantic-Based Tool Detection Method for Robots

Home helper robots have become more acceptable due to their excellent image recognition ability. However, some common household tools remain challenging to recognize, classify, and use by robots. We designed a detection method for the functional components of common household tools based on the mask regional convolutional neural network (Mask-R-CNN). This method is a multitask branching target detection algorithm that includes tool classification, target box regression, and semantic segmentation. It provides accurate recognition of the functional components of tools. The method is compared with existing algorithms on the dataset UMD Part Affordance dataset and exhibits effective instance segmentation and key point detection, with higher accuracy and robustness than two traditional algorithms. The proposed method helps the robot understand and use household tools better than traditional object detection algorithms.

Home Maintenance Business Centre Using Global Positioning System (GPS) Technique in IR 4.0 Era

Home helper is very much sought nowadays as it will alleviate the burden of performing the daily chores at home. Home helpers are usually self-employed and provide home service on a part-time basis. However, to acquire home helper services within local community is quite challenging because the public do not know where and how to reach the person with this services. The examples of services that can be offered include chaperone services, garden maintenance, meals preparation, pet care assistance, household chores assistance or even companionship for the elderly. Obviously, there is a gap between home service providers and the local community who demanded the services. People who offer the services usually promote their services using flyers or by passing their phone number to people. This is not a systematic marketing strategy since the dissemination of information is limited to just a small group of local community. Hence, i-HomeHelper acts as a dynamic platform for individuals to promote their services to the nearby public who require their services using modern technologies in Industry Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). i-HomeHelper enables systematic booking process for the required services and also serves as a platform to promote various services that are available. Details of services that include prices, name of the home helpers and contact numbers are also displayed at the promoting page so that the public can choose the services that meet their criteria. It is anticipated that this application will create an ecosystem of inclusive economic growth for these self-employed individuals and benefits the public who really need an assistance on the household chores or home maintenance

Nye styringsformer og anerkendelseskamp - den vrede hjemmehjælper?

New forms of Governance and Struggles about Recognition – the angry Home Helper? Struggles about recognition of care have evolved during the last decade in Western Europe. In Denmark struggles can be found within the field of elderly care and publicly employed home helpers. This mobilization seems to be related to the prevalence of a new form of governance, New Public Manage- ment (NPM), and is investigated from a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. A discourse analysis of political-administrative texts show a NPM inspired discourse that si- lences the qualifications of home helpers and reproduces misrecognition of care. Focus group interviews show that home helpers employ three different strategies towards this form of governance: the sweet, caring by the book and the professional home helper.

BURDEN OF FAMILY CARE-GIVERS AND THE RATIONING IN THE LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE BENEFITS OF JAPAN

Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI), introduced in Japan in 2000, is rapidly turning into a system of rationed benefits due to financial difficulty. Based on our survey of 2,530 family care-givers and the Zarit Care-Giver Burden Index, we have examined how LTCI is affecting their subjective burden. We have found that, as Kishida and Tanigaki (2004) had shown, (i) insufficient provision of short-term stays, day services and home-helper services, as well as (ii) disruptive or antisocial behaviors of the elderly, increase the care-giver's burden. We then argue that (iii) these results establish the positive contribution of LTCI in the well-being of family care-givers, (iv) short-term stay is the most efficient service, followed by home-helper service, and day service is the least efficient, and we show that (v) J-ZBIC-8 works well enough for many practical purposes.

Independence, Security, and the Intergenerational Social Contract: Home-Helper Services and Elder Care in Rural Japan

For several years, demographic trends and changing ideas about responsibilities for elder care in Japan have contributed to the desire, or need, for families to seek out new care approaches. This article focuses on one alternative to traditional approaches to caring for elder family members—the home-helper program that is available through the Japanese long-term care insurance program. Using ethnographic data collected in northern Japan, it will be argued that the home-helper program forms a compensatory elder care system that is intended to augment family-provided care and social support, rather than to promote independent living. This compensatory approach to elder care is based upon an intergenerational social contract in which it is assumed that some degree of dependence on family members is both an expected and preferred outcome of growing old.