NURSE ROBOT

An army of artificially intelligent caregivers is keeping seniors fit, fed and healthy. They might even be better than the real thing.

- Katrina Onstad

BRIAN SITS AT A TABLE, across from an elderly woman. He is wearing a blue T-shirt and a baseball hat. She is petite, with curly grey hair, an expectant smile, and a tray of scrambled eggs in front of her. “The side dish looks very tasty,” he says in a cheerful voice, reminiscent of a primary school teacher. “Why don’t you try some?”

She takes a bite. “It’s pretty good, Brian,” she says politely.

Brian’s own smile is a little robotic, which isn’t judgey; he’s a prototype socially assistive robot. His stiff expressions are created via actuators beneath his silicone-rubber face, and his blue T-shirt is draped over a torso of wires and arms with metallic hands. The full effect borders on creepy, a mash-up of an emoji, an over-plugged outlet, and a mannequin. Yet among the seniors who encounter him in research testing, Brian is a hit.

Brian’s job is to motivate older adults to eat. Eating can be a life-and-death health issue for elderly people in care, especially those with cognitive impairment. That population is the focus of the work underway at the University of Toronto’s Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory, where Brian and his fellow prototypes were developed.