Grandmother's Little Helper
From: Discover - July 2001, page 16
By: Fenella Saunders

Many elderly people don't get enough care at home because family members
cannot keep up with their needs. "One patient had to be reminded to drink
every 10 minutes. This repetition is a big contributor to caretaker burnout,"
says Sebastian Thrun, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University. A humanoid
machine named Pearl could help. In response to spoken requests, she can give
the weather forecast or the current TV schedule, both aloud and in print on
her display screen. Using laser scanners, she tracks objects and people and
moves to avoid them. Her head, engineered by Greg Baltus of Standard Robot
Company in Pittsburgh and freelance designer Jason Bannister, incorporates a
second display that resembles a mouth, allowing her to simulate emotion.  

During tests at a nursing home near Pittsburgh, Pearl distributed food and
received a warm reception from the residents. Thrun and his colleagues have
since upgraded the robot to issue reminders about tasks such as performing
physical therapy. Future Pearls might go from room to room to make sure
people have awoken in the morning and monitor changes in people`s movements
that might indicate declining health. Ultimately, Thrun hopes such robots
will be affordable enough to use in the home. "With the right care at the
right time, a huge number of people could stay independent much longer, with
a higher quality of life," he says.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~flo/
