Manali - Self Reflection

Week 1

We were introduced to the coursework project that we would be working on: Building a robot to support patients with dementia.

The concept of human centered design was introduced along with its international standards, which was central to the project: how to build robots which are beneficial and focused towards the (human) users? The system should maximize the extent to which the system can be used efficiently, effectively and with satisfaction. The system should consider the social and physical environment of use, the stakeholders and user experience. 

We learned about dementia and the affordances of a robot as a social actor in patients' lives. To further elaborate, two previously studied use cases were introduced:

1. REJAM: A robot for elderly patients with dementia in a care home, which used music therapy to facilitate processes of emotions and cognition. This robot was deployed in Pieter Van Foreest, a care home for the elderly in Akkerleven. Apart from playing music, the robot was played games, acted like a companion and gave individual attention to each person. All activities encouraged reminiscence and helped patients connect with others in the care home. This was a new concept to me: it was nice to see robots taking on the role of encouraging people to socialize, play games and evoke memories and emotion.

2. PAL: A robot for children with diabetes, which supports them in day to day activities like reminding them to take medication, and checking blood sugar levels. It helped the parents be at peace about the sugar level and health of their children. 

For the project, there was a guest lecture which clearly explained how to define social actors. It was interesting to see how giving a simple hobby to each actor makes them seem more human to the developers. We defined the actors for our use case, and made a storyboard for the use case we wanted to focus on. We picked the use case of a patient with dementia suffering from sundown syndrome, which reduces their motivation to have meals. The robot will narrate a story to engage the patient while they complete their meal.

Different robots available were introduced: Pepper, Nao and Miro. We decided to use Pepper as it went hand in hand with the design we had in mind: narrating stories, having a tablet to show images, and the required gestures and movements. 

Week 2

Since our project pertained to a human centric approach of a robot for patients with dementia, it was quite fitting to have a guest lecture which made us aware of the medical aspects of dementia: as engineers, this is a side which we might not know.