The Roberta IRONSIDE project : a cognitive and physical robot coach for dependent persons

Many elderly and dependent people living at home suffer from a lack of social contact. With their strength and physical condition decreasing, they are also reluctant to walk outside. Even in sheltered accommodation or hospitals, they may have phases of loneliness when they are left alone or when the personnel cannot continuously take care of them. With an aging population and the financial difficulties of having a full time caregiver for every dependent person living at home, the proliferation of advanced assistant robots seems to be a viable future solution. However, as most of what can be done with a robot is also possible without it, it is sometimes difficult to quantify the real value this technology can add to the current situation. Hence we believe that such a robot should be a reliable assistant, capable of helping a person indoors as well as outdoors. Furthermore, it should be a companion for dialoging, as well as a system capable of detecting health problems. The Roberta Ironside project proposes to build such an advanced robot. That is, we want to build a cognitive coach that on the one hand fulfills the lack of social contact, and on the other hand may transform into a physical coach when going outside. In this paper we propose an affordable and simplified design for this human-sized humanoid. It starts with an overall description of the robot, followed by a justification for the choice of putting it into an electric wheel-chair. Next, it emphasizes the technology that is used for the head and the face, and then ends with a discussion of the verbal and non-verbal communication capabilities of the robot, highlighting its distinct characteristics as an Embodied Conversational Agent.