Foreign companies develop cognitive assistive electronic dogs, which wag their t

2024-03-27

Recently, I have been considering purchasing an electronic dog online as a belated birthday gift for my aunt. She has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Research indicates that pets can alleviate the loneliness, anxiety, and irritability associated with Alzheimer's. My aunt would certainly prefer a real dog, but she is unable to care for one.

Eventually, I found a toy electronic dog named Golden Pup, manufactured by Joy for All. It wears a bright red bandana and responds to your speech with barks and nods.

When you touch it, it wags its tail, and it even has a realistic heartbeat. It is just one of the many robots designed for patients with Alzheimer's and dementia.

Now, let's explore the prospects of using robots to change the care of dementia.In terms of robots, Golden Pup is undoubtedly a low-tech product, with a price tag of only 140 US dollars. If you are willing to spend about 6000 US dollars, you can opt for Paro, a fluffy robotic baby seal developed in Japan, which can perceive touch, light, sound, temperature, and posture.

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Paro's manufacturer claims that it will develop its own personality and remember behaviors that attract the owner's attention.

Golden Pup and Paro are now both easily available for purchase, but researchers are developing more sophisticated robots for patients with cognitive impairments, capable of engaging in conversations and games using artificial intelligence.

Researchers at Indiana University Bloomington are adjusting a commercial robot system called QT to serve patients with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

The robot they have developed is 60cm tall and looks somewhat like a child wearing an astronaut suit.QT has a round white head with a screen that displays two eyebrows, two eyes, and a mouth, which can form various expressions. The robot can stimulate people's interest in conversation, propose questions generated by artificial intelligence, and keep them talking continuously.

However, the artificial intelligence model they use is not perfect, and the robot's responses are also not perfect. In an awkward conversation, a research participant told the robot that she had a sister. "I'm sorry to hear that," the robot responded, "Are you okay?"

But as the technology of large language models continues to improve, the quality of conversation will also improve. When the QT robot made this embarrassing comment, it was running the GPT-3 model released by OpenAI in 2020 internally.

The recently released latest version, GPT-4o, is faster and can have smoother conversations. You can interrupt the model's response, and it will adjust itself.

The idea of using robots to keep dementia patients connected to the world is not easily accepted by everyone. Some people believe that this gives up our social responsibility and there are privacy issues. The best robot companions should be personalized.They will collect people's life information, understand their preferences, and find the right time to approach them. This data collection may be unsettling, not only to patients but also to medical staff.

Lillian Hung, the creator of the Innovation in Dementia Care and Aging (IDEA) Laboratory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, told reporters about an incident that occurred in a group at a care facility.

She and her colleagues went out for lunch, and when they returned, they found that the staff had unplugged the robot and covered its head with a bag. "They were worried it would secretly record them," she said.

On the other hand, robots have some advantages over humans in conversing with dementia patients. Their attention does not waver, they do not get annoyed or angry when they have to repeat what they have said multiple times, and they do not feel stressed.

More importantly, the number of people with dementia is increasing, while there are too few people to take care of them.According to the latest report from the Alzheimer's Association, between 2021 and 2031, the United States will need more than one million additional caregivers to meet the care needs of patients with dementia. This gap between supply and demand is the largest for a single occupation in the United States.

I have worked in understaffed care facilities. There, patients are often given sedatives to make it easier for caregivers to look after them.

They are tied to wheelchairs and parked in hallways. We hardly have enough caregivers to take care of the basic needs of patients with dementia, let alone provide them with social connections and a good environment.

Kat McGowan, a reporter for Wired, wrote in a story about her parents' dementia and the prospects of social robots: "Caring is not just about taking care of someone's physical problems, but also about taking care of the mental aspect."

"The needs of adults with and without dementia are not much different; we are all looking for a sense of belonging, meaning, and self-actualization."If robots can enrich the lives of dementia patients in a trivial way, if they can provide companionship where there is a lack of it, then it is a victory.

 

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an article in 2021: "We are currently at a turning point where the development and deployment of cognitive assistive robots and personalized interventions for dementia patients have become relatively easy and cheap, and many companies are competing to take advantage of this trend. However, it is important to carefully consider the consequences."

 

Many more advanced social robots may not yet be ready for scaling up, but the low-tech Golden Pup electronic pet is ready. My aunt's illness progressed rapidly, and she occasionally felt frustrated and irritable. I hope the electronic pet can be a welcome (and calming) distraction.

 

Perhaps this will bring a little joy to my aunt and uncle when they feel confused and in pain. Of course, the mechanical puppy is not suitable for everyone. The Golden Pup I chose may not be a real dog, but I hope it can be a good companion.

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