Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities in Assistive and Robotic Kitchen Technologies for Aging Society: A Scoping Review

The world’s population is rapidly aging. According to the United Nations, nearly 10% of the world’s population is over 65 years old. The aging population crisis is arguably one of the most pressing challenges to the future well-being of humanity. The kitchen is an essential place for human activities, and cooking holds significant importance for older adults, serving as a key measure of their capacity for independent living. Moreover, it plays a crucial role in ensuring that older individuals receive the necessary nutrition to maintain good health. Naturally, the investigation of assistive kitchen technologies emerges as a compelling and significant field of research. However, there are no existing reviews that specifically address assistive kitchen and cooking technologies designed for vulnerable populations such as older adults or individuals with disabilities. Therefore, this paper provides a scoping review of the trends, challenges, and opportunities in emerging assistive kitchen and cooking technologies for the past decade. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) methodology was adopted for the review. As a result, 100 peer-reviewed publications from 29 countries were included in this review. These studies cover six major research topics on assistive and robotic kitchens. As a result, the trends, challenges, and opportunities of the current technologies are analyzed, and a modular and adaptable smart kitchen is proposed. The study will fill the scientific gap and lay the groundwork for future development of assistive kitchen technology.