In my last entry, I described what motivated me to leave Microsoft and start a new venture to develop software and services for assistive care robots. After reading it, a friend quibbled with my calling the impending needs of the growing senior population a “Silver Tsunami,” noting that a dramatic drop in the sea level usually serves notice that a tsunami is on the way. He rightly pointed out that in the case of the growing assistive care arena, we’ve been granted no warning ebb: The costs of and demands for resources are just increasing. Considering that the number of available caregivers is decreasing, a more apt analogy for the impending elder care scenario might be “A Perfect Storm.” Our best hope to weather this challenge is to empower seniors to continue to live as independently as possible.
Doing so makes a lot of sense. First, studies show that this is what most seniors prefer—that is, to live independently, “aging-in-place” while living in surroundings that are both familiar and comfortable. Over 90% fear institutionalization more than death. Second, enabling seniors to live independently has a significant savings on care costs. According to the Genworth 2010 Cost of Care Financial Survey, the average costs per day of assisted care facilities ranges from $180 to $206 a day, whereas in-home care costs are only about $18 per hour.
However, while solutions need to include supporting basic daily activities and continued autonomy, quality of life does not stop there. In his book “Drive,” author Daniel Pink writes that not only job satisfaction, but good health and well-being also require the element of mastery and sense of purpose. These factors challenge us to think beyond ourselves and keep us engaged in life. Further, research shows that although cognitive processes such as memory, and physical agility and dexterity may diminish over time, our ability to process and integrate knowledge continues through life and may even improve since we have a greater knowledge base and have fewer distractions.
The big boom
This need to stay engaged will be especially true for that segment of the population that will contribute the largest portion of the increase in seniors, the baby boomers. Boomers will enter their golden years generally healthier than their parents, better educated, more affluent, and they’ll already be familiar with the assistive potential of technology. Having successfully integrated PCs, smartphones, and the Web into both workplaces and homes, boomers are already applying these technologies in caring for their own children and for their aging parents. Research from the Pew Institute also shows that boomers are the fastest growing group moving to social networking applications like Facebook and Twitter. It stands to reason that they will not only have high expectations for options that support greater control and self-management of their health, but a strong desire to continue to be active and involved in the world around them.
Boomers have had a dramatic impact on society at every major stage of their lives; from birth, through teen years, college, and their entry into the workforce. They helped drive the baby products industry, popularize advances in music technology, and–by questioning the status quo of their parents–redefined much of today’s political and social perspectives. The paper published by the Institute for the Future, “Boomers in Transition: The Future of Aging and Health,” provides an excellent overview of the likely effects the aging boomers will generate.
Why robot?
OK, I might not need to convince you of the potential value and opportunity of applying PC and digital technology toward the growing challenges we face with an aging population or healthcare in general. Technology improvements are continuing to move in a positive direction, increasingly becoming ubiquitous and evolving into new forms. Processors are increasingly find their way into our cars, appliances, and elsewhere in our homes, transforming how we consume information and media. Interface technologies like touch, speech, and vision are increasingly making our ability to interact more human-centric and dynamic.
“But why personal robots?” you might ask. After all, aren’t robots just another futuristic sci-fi novelty like jet packs and flying cars? Why not just enhance the technologies (like the PCs) that we already have?”
Let me clarify: In my worldview, the term “robot” goes beyond the conventional role of the industrial automatons designed to perform repetitive and “dull, dirty, and dangerous” jobs. A robot can be any networked configuration of sensors and processors that are programmed to do a specific task or set of tasks. Given this broad definition, forms of robotic technology are already at work in the eldercare arena:
● Biometric devices that measure health vitals can be plugged into a conventional PC, enabling data to be stored, tracked, and transmitted, giving individuals greater ability to monitor and manage their own health data.
● Personal Emergency Response Systems (known as “PERS”—or more familiarly “I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up!” pendants) enable an individual to call for emergency assistance.
● GE’s QuietCare system — a set of wireless passive infra-red sensors that track activity patterns within a residence and transmit data to a dedicated PC for analysis. When activity falls below a set threshold (for example, if Grandma hasn’t exited the bedroom by noon), the system alerts the client’s care provider network.
Of course, more readily identifiable robots have also been quietly finding their way into our homes, whether through the increasing sophistication of dolls and animated toys (Furby, the ill-fated Sony Aibo robot dog, talking Elmo Live, and Zhu Zhu pet hamsters) or in popular products like the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner and its new competitor, the Neato Robotics VX-11. At the farther end of the spectrum, companies like Honda and Toyota have demonstrated impressively more advanced personal robots that can walk, run, and play musical instruments. While the technology to create such robots exists today and can be readily seen in research labs across the world, the costs in terms of components and power requirements make the possibility of owning a robot like these still several years away.
Further, robots are already starting to prove themselves useful assistive technology in our hospitals, delivering meals and medications to patient recovery areas, enabling doctors to remotely check up on patients, supporting rehabilitation therapy, and enabling surgeons to make more precise and less invasive procedures. While these robots don’t fit the stereotypes of film and fiction, they do demonstrate how useful the technology can be and how fast it is also evolving beyond the traditional roles. The tide of increasing innovation of contributing enabling technologies is well matched with the decreasing cost of hardware components. So as we face the impending “perfect storm” of care challenges, we can also see the convergence of technology trends to help us weather that storm.
More brain than brawn
Hoaloha Robotics will initially target robots that are between the extremes of the simple, but useful Roomba and the extraordinarily complex and capable, but prohibitively expensive Honda Asimo; leaning more toward the former and looking forward to the advancements that will eventually make the latter more affordable. We think of this first generation as having more “brain than brawn,” and an evolutionary step up from current desktop and netbook PCs: Just add a few more sensors, a reliable and safe motor drive, sufficient battery power, a friendlier body, and voila! But the robot, at its heart, will still be a PC on wheels (or, more likely, a collection of PCs on wheels).
There are already many companies out there, including Samsung, Toshiba, Panasonic, and many others, capable of building this initial type for robot hardware (and even more), but few beyond toys and gadgets so far have actually made it as commercial products. The hardware capability is there in greater and greater measure everyday. So where are our robots? It may be my bias from working in the software industry for the past 30 years, but I believe the missing elements are the applications and user interface. Just as in the early days of the PC, and as more recently demonstrated by popularity of the iPhone and iPad, great applications and user-centered design are key factors to success solutions. As a result, Hoaloha will focus its efforts primarily on the software and services that will deliver value and a great user experience for the hardware.
That said, a successful solution obviously still requires a complementary relationship between great hardware and software. So while Hoaloha does not plan to invest in creating its own hardware platform, it does provide design consulting to interested partners to help define appropriate form factors. For example, one of the early supporters of the robotics developer platform and toolkit I founded at Microsoft was Vincent Dupourque, CEO of the French robotics company, Robosoft. Vincent and I have had a ongoing dialogue about markets for robots, and he shares my passion for defining a solution to address the assistive care challenges of the future we face. (Robosoft demonstrated its first prototype of such a robot—called Kompaï—earlier this year.) We agreed that Hoaloha and Robosoft could collaborate on the definition and design of a next-generation prototype, creating the ideal initial platform for Hoaloha’s software and services. Robosoft’s expertise in creating a wide variety of types of robots, makes it a great complement to Hoaloha’s objectives. The collaboration allows each company to complement and focus on its respective strengths. It is a model Hoaloha hopes to foster with other companies.
In future blog entries I’ll talk more about the types of software and services Hoaloha will deliver. I’ll also cover the importance and challenges in delivering is socially-assistive user interface.