NYT: Robots for Elder Care? In Japan, the health ministry began a program promoting nursing-care robots that assist with lifting and moving patients. In Europe, researchers developed a touch-screen-toting, humanoid-looking “social companion” robot that offers reminders about appointments and medications and encourages social activity, healthy eating and exercise. In Sweden, researchers have developed GiraffPlus, a robot that looks like a standing mirror cum vacuum cleaner, monitors health metrics like blood pressure and has a screen for virtual doctor and family visits. Researchers in the United States are developing robot-caregiver prototypes as well, but ...the idea that machines could help fulfill more than just physical needs meets largely with skepticism, and occasionally with outrage. As Jerald Winakur, a San Antonio internist and geriatrician, put it, “Just because we digitally savvy parents toss an iPad at our kids to keep them busy and out of our hair, is this the example we want to set when we, ourselves, need care and kindness?” And yet, search YouTube and you can watch developmentally delayed children doing therapy with a cute blue-and-yellow CosmoBot that also collects information about their performance. Or you can see older Japanese people with dementia smiling and chatting happily with a robot named Paro that looks like a baby seal and responds to human speech. Sherry Turkle, an M.I.T. professor and technology skeptic, questions such artificial emotional relationships in her book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.” Yet after watching a 72-year-old woman named Miriam interact with Paro, she noted that the woman “found comfort when she confided in her Paro. Paro took care of Miriam’s desire to tell her a story.” nytimes/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/the-future-of-robot-caregivers.html?_r=1
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 17:24:03 +0000
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