The benefit of humanoid robots
Humanoid robots can be utilized for different purposes including: improving communication skills, assisting the individuals with their daily life, engaging and involving the individuals with various kinds of activities such as exercising, listening to music or entertaining them.[1]
Which robot suits best
Our group choose to use the Pepper Robot, since the main object of our project is to use the Pepper to prevent PwDs from leaving out alone. The key idea is to use music and dialog to persuade the PwD to stay inside.There are three robots were provided to help us in achieving our main object: MiRo, Pepper and NAO.
Miro is not suitable for this case, since Miro does not have the ability to talk like human being, which means it can not have a conversation with PwDs using dialog. Furthermore, Miro is a dog-like robot which is too small, people with dementia can also have visual difficulties because the dementia affects the parts of their brain that handle visual information coming from the eyes. This means they will have visual problems, but have healthy eyes. This would leads that the Miro is easily ignored by the PwD.
Pepper is a Human-sized humanoid robot which is the highest between these three provided Robot, which can make it easier to get the PWD's attention and start a conversation that persuades the PWD from stay inside. Furthermore, Pepper has a tablet on its chest which means it can provide more functions for PwDs to interact, for example, playing the puzzle, playing the video, seeing and changing the pictures and etc. These features not only make it easier for Pepper to distract PWDs attention when they want to go out, but also improve their mood when they are in a bad mood, making them more willing to stay indoors, so Pepper is the most suitable robot is our case.
Nano is a small humanoid robot which has the same kinds of functionalities as the Pepper but much smaller size, although it has the ability to talk like human being, but its size makes it not suitable to our goal, since our main goal is to use the Robot to prevent the PwD from going out alone, the first step is to attract the PwDs' attention when they want to go out. From the perspective of PWD, Nano is too small to be easily overlooked by them. Secondly, from the perspective of NANO itself, the prototype we designed needs the face recognition and detection functions of the robot to determine whether the PWD wants to leave the room or not, So the height of the robot is very important, since the robot's eyes (Cameras sensor used as the face detection and recognition) can more accurately detect the intention of the PWD to leave the room, so that it can detect the PWD every time it approaches the door, and start a conversation about persuading them not to leave the room. But Nano is relatively smaller than the Pepper which has a harder time recognizing PWD's intent to leave the room, so NANO isn't a good fit for our goals.
Robot Platform:
How Pepper is used
One function is using the Pepper to persuade the PwD to keep inside with suggested music according to time of the day and dialog flow,
another function is to notify the caretaker if the PwD insists to go out or wants to go out for a walk.
[1] Mordoch, Elaine & Osterreicher, Angela & Guse, Lorna & Roger, Kerstin & Thompson, Genevieve. (2012). Use of social commitment robots in the care of elderly people with dementia: A literature review. Maturitas. 74. 10.1016/j.maturitas.2012.10.015.