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 The University of Toronto’s Dr. Goldie Nejat works on “Brian,” as Baycrest’s director of culture and heritage Bianca Stern looks on. The robot is being designed to provide long-term care residents affected by cognitive impairment with verbal and social cues to enhance care and quality of life. Baycrest partnership bringing robotics to long-term care ‘Brian’ being designed to enhance dementia care by providing verbal and social cues A partnership between Baycrest Apotex Centre, Jewish Home for the Aged, and the University of Toronto is resulting in a state-of-the-art innovation to help people affected by cognitive impairment. Meet Brian, a robot prototype being designed at the U of T to help caregivers motivate people affected by cognitive impairment by providing verbal and social cues — a sort of mobile life coach, says Bianca Stern, Baycrest’s director of culture and heritage. For example, once completed, Brian will be able to provide encouragement to residents during programming, or remind them of a scheduled event. “We’re looking at a social robot,” Stern tells the Morning Report. “(A robot that can help) people needing social cueing, for example someone saying, ‘Your dress is in the closet,’ or ‘Why don’t you eat a little bit more,’ or ‘Come Mrs. X, exercise class is starting.’” Brian is being designed by a team at the U of T led by Dr. Goldie Nejat, a professor in the university’s mechanical and industrial engineering department and founder and director of the department’s Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory, where Brian is being designed. At the moment, the team is fitting Brian with intelligence sensors and special software that will allow the robot to engage residents. Once complete, Brian will even be able to sense human emotions and respond to those feelings with facial expressions. In fact, the engineers designing Brian analyzed the number of muscles in the human face to determine how the robot can most accurately express emotion. Through the tone and pacing of a voice Brian will be able to determine if a person is frustrated or upset and move towards the person to provide needed cues, Stern adds. While Stern emphasizes that the robot is not being developed to replace the care that people provide, Brian will be, she says, an excellent tool to help enhance care people with cognitive impairment receive. “Hopefully, this robot becomes an assist in the environment, not to replace a health-care professional, (but) to be that other cue,” she says. Complete with moving body parts and a talking head, Brian, who is more than four feet tall and weighs about 200 pounds, is fixed to a moveable platform. A trial run that will see Brian engaging with people on one of the long-term care floors at Baycrest, a world-renowned innovator in long-term care and health-care research, is expected to be launched in early 2011. If you have a story you would like to share with the Morning Report, please call the newsroom at 800-294-0051, ext. 23, or e-mail deron(at)axiomnews.ca. If you have feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at 800-294-0051, ext. 23, or e-mail deron(at)axiomnews.ca.
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