HELPING THE ELDERLY STAY AT HOME WITH AN ARMY OF CAREGIVER DRONES
The world’s ageing population is growing fast, and robotic assistants are becoming a realistic option for older people who want to stay independent
The ranks of older and frail adults are growing rapidly in the developed world, raising alarms about how society is going to help them take care of themselves in their own homes. Naira Hovakimyan has an idea: drones. The University of Illinois roboticist recently received a $1.5 million (about 54 million baht) grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the idea of designing small autonomous drones to perform simple household chores, like retrieving a bottle of medicine from another room.
Ms Hovakimyan acknowledged that the idea might seem off-putting to many, but she believes that drones will not only be safe, but will become an everyday fixture in elder care within a decade or two.
“I’m convinced that within 20 years drones will be today’s cellphones,” she said.
Her research is just one example of many approaches being studied to use technology to help ageing people.
Even though fully functioning robot caregivers may be a long way off, roboticists and physicians predict that a new wave of advances in computerised, robotic and internet-connected technologies will be available in coming years to help older adults stay at home longer.
“Loneliness is at epidemic levels among elders in the US today,” said Juliet Holt Klinger, senior director of dementia care and programmes at Brookdale Senior Living, one of the nation’s largest providers of assisted living and home care.
Brookdale is using a variety of internet-connected services to help ageing clients stay more closely connected with family and friends.
Ms Holt Klinger said there was growing evidence that staying connected, even electronically, offsets the cognitive decline associated with ageing. “We have story after story of reconnection with families through Skype,” she added.
For all the promising ideas, however, sceptics also note that many ideas are “technologies looking for a solution” that inevitably fail the test of practicality.
“We all get really excited on the upside, and then we go through this trough of disillusionment,” said Laurie Orlov, a business analyst who began the Aging in Place Technology Watch blog in 2008.
Even so, examples of robotic and artificialintelligence-derived technologies that will be commercially available in the next decade include intelligent walkers, smart pendants that track falls and “wandering”, room and home sensors that monitor health status, balancing aids, virtual and robotic electronic companions, and even drones.
In her lab, Ms Hovakimyan has begun experimenting with small and large drones.
She refers to them as “Bibbidi Bobbidi Bots”, borrowing a phrase from the Cinderella movie, to make them seem less intimidating.
Last month, in the Nicer Robotics laboratory at the University of Illinois, researchers began experimenting with an Oculus Rift virtual reality viewer to show people how it might feel to be close to a small drone.
She believes that drones could ultimately be used to perform all manner of household chores, like reaching under a table to grab an object, cleaning chandeliers and weeding the lawn.
Many others are trying to devise solutions, as well. In a crowded four-room laboratory in South Seattle, the former Microsoft software designer and executive Tandy Trower is experimenting with a 120cm-tall rolling robot he calls Robby.
With cameras, radar, microphone, speaker, a tablet interface and a movable tray, Robby may someday be able to serve as a mobile companion and even perform some light chores.
Mr Trower said the robot, now a prototype in his Hoaloha Robotics laboratory, would be able to monitor the health of its human companion and assist with tasks like keeping track of medicines. Its screen could also be used for video conferences with physicians and other healthcare providers.
He said that the science-fiction future of eldercare robots is closer than many people believe.
“Rather than seeing the train in the distance, we’re seeing the light shining in our face right now,” he said.
The need for such technology will grow sharply, given the broad demographic shifts sweeping through the world’s population.
An ageing population will place enormous burdens on the world’s health care system by 2050, according to demographers.
Already, for the first time in history, 14% of the world’s population is older than 65, a sharp contrast with the 9.1% of the population that is less than five years old.
Globally, the number of people 60 and over is expected to more than double by 2050 and triple by 2100.
The number of people 80 and above is expected to double by 2050 and increase more than sevenfold by the end of the century.
Despite a patchwork of research and some commercial products, the United States appears to be lagging behind Japan and Europe in developing solutions.
“In both Japan and Europe, it seems that government is more attuned to the potential of technology for ageing populations,” said Jeffrey A Kaye, a neurologist at Oregon Health & Science University.
In addition to smart-home sensors and mobile robots, there are a variety of other efforts to add stationary robots to provide everything from coaching to communications to companionship.
Catalia Health, a San Francisco-based design company, has introduced the Mabu personal health care companion, an interactive robot about the size of a coffeepot.
The system, which has a cartoonish form, listens and speaks and holds a touch-tablet interface. It is designed to act both as a health care coach and to provide a way to stay in touch with doctor’s offices and pharmacies.
“My approach is, ‘Here are the challenges we see in health care. What is the right technology?’ ” said Cory Kidd, chief executive of the start-up firm. “Robots happen to be great for helping with behaviour.”
A more profound question is whether robots or virtual assistants, in tandem with internet communications, can help forestall the effects of ageing, like dementia. Isolation is one of the most vexing problems for older adults, and there is evidence that human contact can postpone intellectual decline.
A study published last summer in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia found that a group of both healthy and mildly cognitively impaired people in their seventies and eighties who engaged in face-to-face daily online conversations for six weeks showed significant improvements in cognitive skills compared with a control group.
“It is not possible to simply tell people to go out and get more friends, so the idea here was to provide a meaningful and frequent dose of social engagement,” said Mr Kaye, the Oregon Health & Science neurologist, who helped organise the study.
Internet, tablet and smartphone systems such as grandPad, a simplified tablet for older adults, and CareAngel, a telephone system to help younger family members stay connected, are emerging to help with care and staving off isolation.
The ultimate test for all these ideas will be whether people will want to use them.
At the Aging 2.0 Conference last month in San Francisco, which focused on new elder-care technologies, Cynthia Breazeal, an MIT Media Lab roboticist, showed off Jibo, an internet-connected tabletop robot with a round swivelling screen that portrays a friendly robotic face.
The concept did not thrill everyone in the large lunchtime audience. During a questionand-answer session at the end of the presentation, a 91-year-old woman said, “If Jibo were my last friend, I would be very depressed.”