Robonurse: new hope for the old

Experts believe that Linda, a R400000 robot that resembles a human-sized chess pawn, could be the perfect solution to one of the biggest hazards facing elderly residents of care homes: falls.

Nurses in such homes are typically so busy that when residents fall and injure themselves in their rooms it can be several hours until they are discovered - not until they fail to appear for a meal, for example.

Continuously sweeping the building in search of distressed residents would be far too demanding on a nurse's time but that's exactly the kind of repetitive task to which robots are ideally suited.

Not only could robots like Linda patrol corridors for 24 hours a day, they could save nurses valuable time by performing additional tasks, such as carrying messages or escorting patients to appointments.

There's just one snag: how does a robot tell the difference between an elderly and vulnerable patient who has collapsed, and a similarly shaped object, such as a large duffel bag, lying on the floor?

The problem of teaching machines to distinguish between an everyday situation and an emergency is now being tackled by a £7-million (R11.3-million) EU-funded project at six European universities.

The project is focused on programming robots to learn about their environment and recognise when something is amiss.

The first major phase of the study was a few months ago at the University of Lincoln, UK, where researchers from the universities of Birmingham, UK, and Aachen, Germany, gathered for a week of intensive programming.

Within five years, the scientists hope that a robot in a care home will be able to learn about its surroundings and create recognisable patterns of everyday activity, such as doors opening and closing, or furniture being moved.

Operating without any input from humans for up to three months at a time, the robots should be able to tell the difference between a normal situation, such as someone leaving his room during the day, and an abnormal one, such as doing so in the middle of the night.

In the second phase of the project, robots will be deployed as patrolling security guards in office buildings, picking up signs of unusual activity such as open windows or people moving around at night.