Your Very Own Assistant
From: Discover, March 2000 - page 47

Cancer may not be cured and heart disease may still be rampant, but something
about medical science seems to be working well, because people are living
longer. Life expectancy rates have increased every year since 1993, and
living to be 80 years old is hardly unusual. That`s good news, but as members
of the baby boom generation add candles to their birthday cakes, social
problems are likely to increase. 

For example, Joe Engelberger, an energetic voice in a robotics roundtable,
says there aren`t nearly enough nursing homes to meet the crush of people who
are likely to need assisted care in the future. And because most families
need two income-producing adults to pay off a mortgage, it`s unlikely we`ll
be free to take care of our aging parents. What can be done? Ask the
Japanese. They are pouring money into developing the perfect assistants for
older people: robots.  

It turns out that the kind of help older people need is exactly what a robot
would be good at - lifting and carrying, keeping track of medicines taken,
vacuuming and cleaning, and operating devices that people with arthritis
can`t manage, including magnetically sealed refrigerator doors and microwave
push panels. 

At the roundtable, Sebastian Thrun, from Carnegie Mellon, told a
heartbreaking tale of an elderly woman admitted to an emergency room. She had
been found in her bathtub, where she had been lying for two days, unable to
lift herself out. That sort of work would be a snap for a robot. Many on our
panel agreed that the technology necessary to build a robot that could take
care of the elderly is available - without waiting for artificial
intelligence software. They point out that we`ve already created sensory
devices that far exceed human capabilities. A robot could easily be equipped
with a sniffer to detect a gas leak or a smoldering purse accidentally left
on a stove-top long before a human nose would notice. A robot could be built
that hears better than a dog. A robot with infrared sensing could see better
in the dark than a cat. And a robot could perform intricate work like
removing a splinter. 

Still, the concept of a workable robot as a household assistant apparently
seems so much like science fiction that venture capitalists and corporations
can`t wrap their minds around it. As chairman of a company that has been
building robotic hospital couriers for years, Engelberger has been looking
for $5 million to build a helpmate for older people and says he could have it
ready to mass-produce in 27 months. We hope he finds the money, and we`ll be
following his progress.


Caption: Flo, created by Sebastian Thrun and his team at Carnegie Mellon, is
a prototype servant for the elderly designed to help keep them independent.
The nearly five-foot-tall robot will remind patients to take medication,
serve as a contact with off-site healthcare providers, and help manage daily
tasks.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nursebot/
http://www.springer-ny.com/catalog/np/aug98np/1-85233-039-2.html