Engineers at the University of Waterloo have discovered a new way to program robots to help people with dementia locate medicines, glasses, phones and other items they need but have lost.
And while the initial focus is on helping a specific group of people, one day the technology could be used by anyone who has searched far and wide for something they’ve lost.
“The long-term impact of this is really exciting,” said Dr. Ali Ayub, a postdoctoral fellow in electrical and computer engineering. “A user can be engaged not just with a companion robot, but with a custom companion robot that can give them more independence.”
Ayub and three colleagues were surprised by the rapidly increasing number of people dealing with dementia, a condition that restricts brain function, causing confusion, memory loss and disability. Many of these people repeatedly forget the location of everyday objects, which decreases their quality of life and places an additional burden on caregivers.
Engineers believed that a companion robot with an episodic memory of its own could be a game changer in such situations. And they managed to use artificial intelligence to create a new type of artificial memory.
The research team started with a Fetch mobile manipulator robot, which has a camera to perceive the world around it.
Then, using an object detection algorithm, they programmed the robot to detect, track, and keep a memory record of specific objects in its camera view via stored video. With the robot able to distinguish one object from another, it can record the time and date that objects enter or leave its sight.
The researchers then developed a graphical interface to allow users to choose the objects they want to track and, after typing the names of the objects, search for them on a smartphone or computer app. Once that happens, the robot can tell when and where it last observed the specific object.
Tests have shown that the system is very accurate. And while some people with dementia may find the technology daunting, Ayub said caregivers could easily use it.
In the future, the researchers will conduct user studies with people without disabilities and then with people with dementia.
An article about the project Where is my phone? Towards the development of an episodic memory model for companion robots to track users’ highlighted objects, was presented at the recent 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
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