Mr. Johnson is a 88 year old elderly widowed gentleman who lives at home with 24/7 home care. His son, Rob and his wife, are both in their 60s and cannot afford to financially support the 24/7 home care and have started to look for nursing care options. Much to Mr. Johnson’s despair, there is nothing he can do about it but comply. So Rob and his wife start the hunt for the next best thing to home care.
Rob’s work friend suggested a nursing care home called New Age Nursing Home that has been in the news recently as being the most technologically advanced facility with state of the art robotics used to make the clients’ stay as comfortable and therapeutic as possible. This peaked Rob’s interest, he and his wife decided to check it out. And boy were they blown away by the variety of robots they saw used at the facility.
The Aethon TUG was used to transport all kinds of materials and supplies between nursing stations. It was also used to bring food trays to all the floors of the facility.
The GiraffPlus is a robot that provides video conferencing to support conversations and interactions between doctors and patients. It was so amazing for them to see clients using the robot to talk to their doctors who were working miles away from their own offices. GiraffPlus also had telehealth sensors, monitors, and alarm systems that it used to detect any deterioration in the client’s health.
Autom was especially cool because this robot acted as a coach for healthy living motivation, diet, and exercise! Autom was “a programmable, sociable, talking mini robot [and its main purpose was] as a personal weight loss coach. It [could] learn about, and adapt to its user, providing him/her with tailored advice and motivation”(Dahl and Boulos, 2013). This was just unreal to Rob and his wife because Autom the robot was basically replacing a real person in helping clients gain control over their health based on each client’s special needs. “Autom [also featured] a touch screen for a more natural user interaction with the robot’ software interface” (Dahl and Boulos, 2013). When Rob asked some of the clients at the facility about Autom, the clients said they’ve made “longlasting [relationships] with it, but others also saw it “as a less useful gimmick” (Dahl and Boulos, 2013).
Rob and his wife walked out of New Age Nursing Home thinking what a fascinating place this was that they were so interested in finding investing into the well being of their clients. That they were open to look into new ways to help their clients.
Near the end of their tour, Rob and his wife were passing an lounge area and they were just stunned at what they were seeing. A little robot called NAO was leading a physiotherapy one to one session with a client. When they asked more about this, one of the nursing staff explained a study was being conducted to see how clients would react to the speed of the exercises conducted by NAO the robot. The staff also highlighted that the clients were forming strong relational bonds with the human physiotherapist and would abuse that relationship by asking for less repetitions during sessions. So the NAO robot was used as a symbol of “bad cop” to see how clients would adjust to the robot. Rob and his wife were immediately excited about finding out the results of the study.
Discussion Questions
1. Imagine you were put in charge of picking a nursing home for your Grandparent. Would you be impressed with how things were run at New Age Nursing Home? Explain your answer.
2. What kind of relationships would the clients make with robots like NAO or Autom that interact with the clients at such a great degree like a human would?
3. Would using such technology even be cost effective? Autom needs a subscription fee and that NAO takes lithium ion batteries when its batteries die out, or other repair/maintenance costs?
4. How do you feel about New Age Nursing home replacing humans with robots and cutting jobs that are non technical or non-highly skilled like that of staff that may bring materials to and from nursing stations, or check daily vitals like heart rate or blood pressure for clients?
Extension Activity Please watch this news report on PARO the soft seal robot being used as therapy for elderly survivors of the Fukushima tsunami and earthquake. In your opinion, how appropriate is it to use a robot for therapy for these survivors? What kind of relationships are they making with this non-living animal that needs to recharge everyday before it can offer therapy?