A resident of a long-term care facility sits in front of her dinner absent-mindedly, lost in thought. Noticing that she has not touched the food in front of her for some time, a voice asks her “Do you not like your soup? Your soup smells great! Please pick up your spoon and have some soup”. The resident obediently picks up her spoon, transfers a spoonful of soup into her mouth and smiles. The voice belongs to Brian 2.0, a socially assistive robot.
This is not a scene from a science-fiction movie such as ‘Robot and Frank’. This is real and happened at a long-term care centre at Baycrest in Toronto. Brian is not a movie character; he is a human-like robot created by scientists, led by Goldie Nejat, the director of Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory (ASB Lab) at University of Toronto.
With the aging of baby boomers, and lack of trained healthcare staff to care for all of those who would need assistance, our publicly-funded healthcare system is poised to burst at the seams. Scientists hope that socially assistive robots such as Brian could extend a helping hand to the elderly in assisted-living facilities and eventually even in their own homes.
Until now, robots have mostly been used for what roboticists call the “three Ds” – jobs that are dirty, dangerous and dull. But advances in computer vision, speech recognition and artificial intelligence, among other things, has helped develop social robots that can interact in a natural way with humans.
Brian looks like a humanoid robot from a Star Wars movie. His voice is computer- generated and his face is made of silicone rubber. His torso is mounted on a platform, and his arms are clearly mechanical. Since robots that look too human can be confusing to the elderly, the artificial look is maintained.
Despite all that, Brian does manage to create a human-like presence. When he speaks people look at his face, not at the laptop that serves as his brain. As mentioned earlier, Brian was piloted at a long-term care center at Baycrest in Toronto in fall 2011.
While Brian encourages people to eat, Brian 2.1 can also help people play a card-matching memory game, giving encouragement and even hints to the player. Eventually Brian will be able to roll around a room, looking for people to interact with. He might even be an in-home assistant, chatting, keeping track of medication, and generally engaging with and helping the person he lives with.
Nejat says that the biggest challenge was teaching Brian to recognize people’s behaviours. By monitoring a person’s word use, body language and gestures, gaze and even heart rate, Brian will be able to tell if someone is upset, engaged, happy or sad, and change his own behaviour accordingly. If he recognizes a person is sad, for instance, he might try hard to cheer them up.
Other creations of ASB lab (http://asblab.mie.utoronto.ca/) are Casper, Tangy, and Leia. Casper is a friendly robot capable of assisting in the kitchen, and encouraging even a cognitively impaired person to cook simple meals with him.
Tangy, introduced in June 2015, is capable of facilitating a Bingo game for a group of people, including assisting someone with their card and celebrating when someone wins.
Leia is a small desktop robot developed by ASB lab, capable of helping a person choose appropriate outfit and footwear for different tasks. If the person disapproves of Leia’s choice of outfit or shoes, Leia is able to incorporate the person’s preferences, and suggest other alternatives.
If you are wondering how older people would respond to robots and whether they would accept them, you are not alone. In fact, one-third of all assistive technologies are abandoned within a year. This is because time and money constraints often deprive technology developers of the opportunities of testing them with the intended users.
Nejat and her team from ASB lab designed a study to determine if Brian 2.1’s human-like assistive and social characteristics would promote the use of the robot as a cognitive and social interaction tool to aid with activities of daily living.
A robot acceptance questionnaire administered during a robot demonstration session with a group of 46 elderly adults showed that the majority of the individuals had positive attitudes toward the socially assistive robot and its intended applications.
Recent studies have shown that cognitive and social interventions are crucial to the overall health of older adults including their psychological, cognitive, and physical well-being. However, due to the rapidly growing elderly population of the world, the resources and people to provide these interventions is lacking. So the prospect of using human-like socially assistive robots to encourage older adults to be physically and cognitive active is very exciting. Yes, robots are coming very soon.
Padmaja Genesh, who holds a bachelor degree in medicine and surgery as well as a bachelor degree in Gerontology, has spent several years teaching and working with health care agencies. A past resident of Red Deer, and a past board member of Red Deer Golden Circle, she is now a Learning Specialist at the Alzheimer Society of Calgary. Please send your comments to padmajaganeshy@yahoo.ca