Are robots the future of eldercare?

Researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences’ robotics program are developing software for an autonomous household robot that could help care for the elderly.

By University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences

October 15^th, 2024

In many countries facing aging populations and declining fertility rates, the number of elderly people who need help in their homes may soon exceed the number of younger people able to provide it.

Ubbo Visser, a computer scientist at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, believes robots could help solve this problem.

“Think of it: If you’re able to keep an elderly person one year longer in their home, not only does this give that particular person comfort to be at home, but also it would have a significant financial impact on the medical system,” said Visser, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science. “Sometimes all you need is a robot who is bringing things or a robot who is helping you out of a lounge chair to go to the restroom.”

While this might sound like something out of a science fiction movie, Visser and his students are already developing software for an autonomous household robot able to perform tasks like bringing an elderly person water and reminding them to take their medication.

These are simple tasks for a human, but for a robot, they require complex abilities such as understanding human speech and recognizing and manipulating objects.

Take, for example, fetching a bottle of water. A robot must first understand the request, then locate the kitchen, travel there safely, open the fridge, recognize the water bottle, grasp it, and bring it to the human. And that’s not all.

“The robot has to have an appropriate way of communicating with a human, meaning looking in the human’s eye, building rapport, being understanding, and reflective listening,” Visser said. “You might think, ‘That sounds easy.’ But it’s pretty much the hardest task.”

Visser and his students are conducting their research using two Toyota Human Support Robots. The company has entrusted a select group of researchers, including teams at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to test the prototype.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Ph.D. students Katarzyna Pasternak, Julio Ojalvo, and Christopher Duarte were hard at work on their computers in the robotics lab. One of the Toyota robots, nicknamed “Palpi” after the “Star Wars” character Palpatine, stood in the center of the room. A team of two-foot-tall soccer-playing Nao robots dressed in University of Miami jerseys lounged on a couch nearby. Before their focus shifted to the household robot, the robotics team used to work with the soccer-playing robots, whose knees and hips have since given out.

The researchers said they were drawn to robotics in part because it enables them to make a positive social impact using their computer science skills.

“It’s very easy to go from ‘this is my research’ to ‘this is how my research is going to impact the world,’” said Ojalvo. “It’s easy to make that connection.”

Although the researchers have different focus areas within robotics, they work as a team to program the robots. Pasternak focuses on human-robot interactions, Ojalvo concentrates on the ability to locate and grasp objects, and Duarte’s research centers on natural language processing—the ability to understand and talk to a human. A fourth member of the team, Shengxin Luo, conducts research involving facial expressions.

This summer, the team was one of only 11 worldwide to qualify for the RoboCup@Home league, an international robotics competition in which the robots compete in tasks like picking up objects from a table and placing them on a shelf. RoboCup also includes robot soccer leagues and a league for rescue robots designed to help in emergency situations such as combing through earthquake rubble.

The RoboCanes team encountered unexpected navigation errors at this year’s competition, which prevented them from advancing, but in recent years they have ranked as the best team in North America and among the top five in the world. Regardless of the competition outcome, RoboCup provides students with an opportunity to test their research outside the lab.

The high-pressure situations teams encounter during competitions also teach students to work well under pressure. This is a highly sought-after ability in the robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) job market, said Visser, who founded the RoboCanes team in 2010 and was recently named president of the RoboCup Federation, which runs the RoboCup competitions and an international symposium. Former RoboCanes have gotten jobs at companies like Google Brain, Toyota Research International, and Volkswagen.

The research and competitions are important parts of the robotics program, but students also discuss ethical issues. While Pasternak, Ojalvo, and Duarte said they believe robotics and AI will help humans more than it harms them, they are in favor of regulations to lower the risks that bad actors could misuse the technology.

“When the worldwide web first came out, we called it the ‘wild west,’” said Duarte. “You wait 10 years and there are regulations that come out and now it’s more civilized.” With AI and robotics, he added, “You do have to worry about bad actors now at the beginning, but afterwards, it will become regulated.”

Concerns about the potential for harm could keep humans from allowing autonomous robots into their homes until long after they are widely used in rescue operations and other environments.

“I think homes are probably the last place that they’re going to get integrated,” Ojalvo said. “I think that’s going to take a long time, not necessarily for the technology, but for people to be willing to allow robots into their homes.”

Eventually, though, the researchers expect that humans will employ robots in numerous contexts.

“There are applications almost everywhere,” said Pasternak. Within their labs and in the RoboCup competitions, she added, computer scientists are talking about not only “What do we want to see in the research?” but also “What do we want to see in the world?”