Feds Creating Robots for Old People
Feds Creating Robots for Old People
$799,860 project to ‘ensure elderly are eating healthily’
BY: Elizabeth
Harrington
December 12, 2014 3:00 pm
The federal government is financing the creation of
robots that can assist the elderly and make sure they are eating healthily.
A nearly $800,000 project from the National Science
Foundation (NSF) is pairing the University of Pennsylvania with a robot company
to create the machines, which will be able to deliver glasses of water to
senior citizens.
The government said that the project is necessary due to
a demographic crisis in America where soon there will not be enough young
people to take care of their elders.
“This Partnership For Innovation project develops and
tests the use of service robots to monitor and improve health of the elderly,”
the grant for the project, awarded in August, states. “The growing elderly
population coupled with low birth rates in the developed world is creating a
crisis in healthcare. The number of senior citizens is outgrowing the number of
working-age adults to care for them.”
“In the U.S. alone, the number of seniors over age 65 is
projected to double from year 2000 to 2030, reaching 71.5 million,” it
continued. “With the scarcity of care options available, affordable robots are
a welcome solution for assisting elders with small tasks that would normally be
done by a caregiver.”
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, led by
Mark Yim, a professor in the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
(MEAM) department, are joining with Savioke, a California-based company that is
building robots for the services industry.
The robot developed by the NSF project will be able to
perform a “limited set of elder-relevant manipulation tasks,” including
“picking up dropped items or filling a water glass.” The machine will also be
used for data collection on seniors’ health.
“This mobile manipulator robot will be used to perform
service tasks, such as delivering water to elders,” the grant said. “The data
gathered by these robots and how elders use them in the field will provide
information about how robots can help create a larger data-driven health
monitoring system.”
“While helping elders with activities of daily living in
an elder care facility, the system learns about them,” it added. “It can then
do things such as help ensure that they are eating or drinking healthily.”
The project, which is expected to continue until 2017 and
has cost $799,860 so far, is building off of Savioke’s robots, including the
recently released “SaviOne.”
SaviOne provides room service to guests at an Aloft hotel
in Cupertino, Calif. The machine looks like a moving trash can with an iPad on
top, and makes beep noises to sound like a robot.
The company calls SaviOne its “robot butler,” and
encourages people to take selfies with it, like this hotel guest, who was
disappointed after paying $300 a night only to find the robot out of order.
The University of Pennsylvania is currently working on
adding a “prismatic joint arm” to Savioke’s robots.
“We are passionate about delivering easy-to-use yet
sophisticated robots that can help people,” the company says on its website.
Savioke believes that personal robots can help people to
“achieve their potential,” and wants them “anywhere people sleep or eat.”
“Over time, personal robots will help people to achieve
their potential, enhancing our strengths, overcoming our weaknesses, and
endowing us with new capabilities we are just beginning to imagine,” they said.
“We are inspired by people who use technology to overcome disabilities, and we
believe that robots have the potential to make all of our lives better.”
Savioke’s CEO, Steve Cousins, formerly was president of
Willow Garage, a robot company that helped found the Robots for Humanity
initiative. Robots for Humanity was successful in helping Henry Evans, who
suffered a debilitating stroke at 40 years old leaving him mute and
quadriplegic.
“It took me several years, but with the help of an
incredibly supportive family I finally decided life was still worth living,”
Evans told an audience in a lecture 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C., from
his bed in California. “I became fascinated with using technology to help the
severely disabled.”
Through robotic technology, Evans is now able to
communicate, shave, open his refrigerator, and fly drones, only with the
movement of his head.
A Japanese company has already developed robots that are
used as companions for the elderly. “Paro,” is designed to resemble a baby harp
seal, and elderly residents at a California retirement community mistook the
robot for an animal.
The NSF is also investing in machines for children,
committing $10 million to build robots that will act as kids’ “personal
trainers,” in an effort to influence their behavior and eating habits.
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