Caregiving robots on the way, UIC scientists say
From: Chicago Tribune - 09/02/2009
By: Patti Ahern

Elderly patients who want to stay in their homes instead of having to
consider or be put in a nursing home could get help from a robot in the
not-too-distant future, according to researchers at the University of
Illinois at Chicago. A basic prototype of a robotic caregiver for the elderly
might be a mere three years away, they say. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-robots-for-elderly-city-zonesep02,0,2449341.story

Links:
Milos Zefran
http://www.cvrl.cs.uic.edu/~milos/
http://www.ece.uic.edu/Faculty/zefran.html

Robots may soon be serving the elderly at home just like humans do
http://silverscorpio.com/robots-may-soon-be-serving-the-elderly-at-home-just-like-humans-do/

iRobot CEO: Robot nurses to cut health care costs
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10345239-1.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Robotically Helping the Elderly
http://blog.jumpintotomorrow.com/?p=2382

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Role for Robots: Helping Elderly at Home
From: UIC News - 09/09/2009
By; Paul Francuch

Three University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) engineers and a Rush University
nursing specialist have been awarded a three-year, $989,000 National Science
Foundation grant to develop robots that can help care for the elderly and
people with limited mobility. "We want to help elderly people communicate
with robots, to tell them what they need, and to perform physical
activities," says UIC professor Milos Zefran, the project's lead
investigator. The researchers plan to create software that will enable the
elderly to communicate with robots capable of responding to a variety of
verbal language and non-verbal gestures and touch commands. Zefran says
helping the elderly stay in their own homes will improve their health outlook
and relieve the burden on family members and health care providers. The
researchers are developing communication interface software that will feature
a novel adaptive and reliable recognition methodology known as Recognition by
Indexing and Sequencing (RISq). RISq will enable robots to comprehend speech
even if it is altered by impairments. Techniques from natural language
processing and haptics will allow the robot to understand and respond to
various forms of human touch, and help it know how to respond to the user
safely when performing chores such as cooking or making a bed. "We'll
identify what kind of language, physical interactions, and non-verbal
interactions are used," Zefran says. "Then we'll develop a mathematical
framework to model this interaction so it can be treated by the robot as a
single way of communicating."  

Read the entire article at:
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/uicnews/articledetail.cgi?id=13412