Tuesday, September 16, 2025 9/16/2025

Effectiveness and adoption of a Smart home-based social assistive robot for care of individuals with Alzheimer's Disease

Award Number: R01AG075892
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/15/2022
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 07/31/2027

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Effectiveness and adoption of a Smart home-based social assistive robot for care of individuals with Alzheimer's Disease - Project Summary/Abstract It is highly beneficial and meaningful for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (IAD) to age-in-place. Prolonging time at home helps preserve their memories, spatial awareness and socio-emotional connections. At the same time, undue care burden is imposed and is associated with high rates of depression and anxiety among family caregivers. While relocation to long term care is an option, the alarming increase in annual costs with assisted living and nursing home admission creates significant financial constraints on the families. There is a significant need for novel technological solutions to promote independence, health, and safety of IAD to age-in-place. To address this need, we propose to develop a smart home-based social assistive robot (SAR) called Mobile Assistive Robot with Smart Sensing (MARSS). Our innovative SAR will: a) have four evidence-supported modalities of care built in- activity engagement and assistance, telehealth, home safety, and caregiver-care recipient connectivity; and b) a training program to enable a non-technology expert (caregiver, family member or health professional) to scale and program the modalities to fit with the disease severity and context of the IAD. MARSS will be developed and tested in accordance to the NIH Stage Model of Intervention Development. We have already pilot-tested a lab-based model of MARSS (Stage Ia). Now our priority is to pilot test the technology in the community (with 8 dyads of IAD and caregivers) and verify its implementation fidelity, robustness as well as behavior change techniques to optimize target engagement of IADs and caregivers (Aim I- Stage IB). To address Aim II (Stage III), we will conduct an 18-month randomized controlled trial to validate the real-world efficacy of MARSS. We will recruit 60 dyads in two staggered cohorts of IAD and caregivers and randomly assign them to the intervention (n=30) or a control group (n=30). We will gather repeated measures data on the IAD’s functional independence, safety, and physical and cognitive health, and the caregiver’s perceived care burden, autonomy and wellbeing over nine data points, 2 months apart. To account mechanism-focused change, we will objectively collect data on the technology’s utilization to tease out the influence of the MARSS’s modalities on the intervention outcomes. In addition to much needed empirical evidence on AD-based SARs, the findings will contribute knowledge to create and test advanced yet pragmatic technological solutions to strengthen aging-in-place of IAD.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $618,865 )
2025	2025	UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF NEW HAMPSHIRE	51 COLLEGE RD	DURHAM	NH	03824	STRAFFORD	USA	Aging Research	000	4	8/5/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$618,865
														Subtotal = $618,865

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $689,054 )
2024	2024	UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF NEW HAMPSHIRE	51 COLLEGE RD	DURHAM	NH	03824	STRAFFORD	USA	Aging Research	000	3	8/16/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$689,054
														Subtotal = $689,054

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $675,015 )
2023	2023	UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF NEW HAMPSHIRE	51 COLLEGE RD SERVICE BLDG 107	DURHAM	NH	03824	STRAFFORD	USA	Aging Research	000	2	8/9/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$675,015
														Subtotal = $675,015

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $611,300 )
2022	2022	UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF NEW HAMPSHIRE	51 COLLEGE RD SERVICE BLDG 107	DURHAM	NH	03824	STRAFFORD	USA	Aging Research	000	1	8/5/2022	NEW	$611,300
														Subtotal = $611,300

Grand Total All Awards = $2,594,234

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Effectiveness and adoption of a Smart home-based social assistive robot for care of individuals with Alzheimer's Disease

Award Number: R01AG075892

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/15/2022

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 07/31/2027

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