Helping the Elderly

Residents and staff at the Sunny View Retirement Community in San Jose, California have been trying out a robotic device called Paro (for a five-month test run) that was developed by a Japanese inventor to serve as a mechanical pet for elderly nursing-home residents.

Designed to resemble a cute baby harp seal and equipped with microprocessors and electronic sensors that respond to light, touch, voices and movement), Paro is an early entry in a new wave of interactive robots that university researchers and tech companies are developing for people with special needs (seniors with dementia, children with autism, stroke survivors and those who have been through other conditions).

The researchers believe that Paro and other similar robots can be a calming and socializing influence on people who have cognitive problems; but some critics are wary, fearing that this process will lead to machines replacing human caregivers or companions (MIT social scientist Sherry Turkle has written that while robots like Paro may offer comfort to isolated seniors, “it could make us less likely to look for other solutions for their care“). Maja Mataric, University of Southern California computer science professor who studies human-robot interaction, says it’s important to consider the ethics of using robots. But for some nursing home residents, she added, “the alternatives might be staring at the floor for hours, or at a television set. What’s good about that?”

And according to Sunny View activity director Katie Hofman, isolation is a big concern with aging seniors (the staffers at Sunny View’s memory care center have used a pair of Paro robots to draw the residents out of their rooms-and into conversations. There’s a resident cat, and sometimes visitors bring dogs, but live animals can be messy or present safety issues with some residents, Hofman said).

Front Porch, the non-profit organization that operates Sunny View, is looking into further use of the Paro robots. Some residents act as if the Paro is a live animal, while others clearly recognize it’s not, Hofman said. “They will say, ‘You’re not real, are you?’ But they still think it’s cute,” she said. “The way I look at it is: If they want to respond as if it’s real, we want to honor that. Or if someone else isn’t interested, we’re not going to force it. But whatever will help them live their life in the fullest, we’re going to meet them there” (Source: “Japanese inventor develops robotic device to help elderly”-San Jose Mercury News-The (Sunday) Vindicator, August 10, 2014).

The Homebound

For the past six years, Amy Lamb, an app development consultant at Northwestern Mutual (Waukesha, Wisconsin), has been forced by a severe poinsettia allergy to stay away from her workplace during the holiday season. But this recent holiday season was enhanced by the BeamPro, a 62-inch-tall robot on wheels that Lamb can control from her home computer (once logged on, Lamb’s in front of a Web camera that makes her face visible on the robot’s screen. She’s then able to move-robotically-around the office. With BeamPro (made by Palto Alto-based Suitable Technologies Inc., part of the growing telepresence robot market) she can also attend meetings remotely, turn the robot toward whoever’s speaking, join her friends for lunch in the cafeteria and even participate in a holiday skit. “The cool thing this year is that I got got to actually see the poinsettia tree without having a reaction and got to hear the Christmas band,” she said.

Key markets for the BeamPro robots are health care, education and business (they’re often used to be in multiple places at once, or to tour factories in other parts of the world). When Northwester Mutual purchased 14 in late 2014, the company perception was not positive, said Karl Gouverneur, chief tech officer.

But now, given the company’s seven buildings in the Milwaukee area, the robots have come to be viewed as important tools in helping to build a more interactive and collaborative workplace, he said. There have been minor issues-one fell down a step once; and sometimes impatient employees leave a robot in the meeting room, rather than returning it to the docking station. And the robots can’t operate inside elevators (yet; an upgrade is underway).

Nevertheless, the robots represent an incremental step forward, said Bilge Mutlu, associate professor of computer science-University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Our research shows that embodiment adds to collaboration. It improves trust over more impoverished versions of communication, such as just audio or video” (Source: “Can’t make it to work? Robot keeps woman plugged in”-Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (TNS)-The (Sunday) Vindicator, January 31, 2016).