Re-imagining personal assistants for seniors staying alone

“Hey Google, switch on the TV.” That’s probably pretty familiar to us.

With the introduction of Internet of Things, smart home technologies have now become part and parcel of our daily lives. Gone are the days when we had to search for the remote control and move close to the TV . Home hubs such as Echo, SmartThings and HomePod make it possible for us to “tell” our instructions to smart home applications.

It’s only one problem though, our Home hubs and our smart home applications do not speak to us. And for those who are staying alone (with just the technologies around them), it can be lonely.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2011), nearly one-third of the seniors stay by themselves. This phenomenon is not isolated to the North America. In China, it was predicted that 90% of seniors would live alone by 2030 (Liu et al, 2020). Addressing seniors’ loneliness is of paramount importance.

Luckily, we now have the option of turning to LifePod, a proactive virtual care assiatant for seniors aging-in-place living at home.

LifePod’s unique proactive voice capability enables the LifePod to speak to its user without being first “woken” by the user. Based on the schedule and services personalized by adult children and professional caregivers, LifePod checks in with the seniors on their well-being, remind them on their appointments and daily routine. As an extension of Alexa, it is capable of controlling the seniors’ smart home applications at home and engaging in conversations. LifePod is the seniors’ virtual assistant accompanying them 24/7 at home.

What’s great about LifePod is its monitoring mechanism — based on the information and interaction that it has with the seniors, it then send daily reports and text alerts to the caregivers, so the latter would not be left worried wondering about the seniors’ condition at home.

For seniors who have difficulty speaking or have speech disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple sclerosis, there are possibilities to extend LifePod’s service in the near future. MIT Media Lab developed a prototype for a wearable device, AlterEgo, that allows humans to communicate with computing devices and other people without the need of verbalizing the interaction.

Using electrolytes that captures a user’s peripheral neural signals when internal speech articulators are volitionally and neurologically activated, during a user’s internal articulation of words, AlterEgo transmits words to computing devices in discretion.

The best part of AlterEgo lies with its respect for users’ privacy. As much as the device looks like it is “reading” your brain, it does not do so. To activate AlterEgo, users have to make a conscious effort to say a word using subtle movements of internal speech organs. Since you can’t activate AlterEgo just by thinking of words, you would not have to worry about the device spying on you and your thoughts. That’s a great plus for privacy and security. After all, we do not want all our thoughts to be known, processed or even recorded.

With the possibility of combining AlterEgo into LifePod in future, seniors and their caregivers, could be assured of a higher quality of living worry free while choosing to stay alone. With advancement in smart home technologies, we could now age in grace. Who knows, perhaps one day LifePod would even evolve to be a social companion for the seniors, providing social and emotionally support beyond its current personal assistant duties.

References:

LifePod Solutions. (2020, February 18). LifePod How it Works. LifePod. https://lifepod.com/how-it-works/

Liu, N., Andrew, N. E., Cadilhac, D. A., Yu, X., Li, Z., Wang, J., & Liang, Y. (2020). Health-related quality of life among elderly individuals living alone in an urban area of Shaanxi Province, China: a cross-sectional study. Journal of International Medical Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0300060520913146

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. (n.d.). AlterEgo. MIT Media Lab. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/alterego/overview/

US Census Bureau Public Information Office. (2011, November 17). Census Bureau Releases Comprehensive Analysis of Fast-Growing 90-and-Older Population — Aging Population — Newsroom — U.S. Census Bureau. US Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/aging_population/cb11-194.html