Mini robot companion for elderly care / monitoring

• Main Author: Hsin, Jia Jing
• Other Authors: Oh Hong Lye
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2018
• Subjects: Engineering::Computer science and engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76165
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The increase in ageing population caused an increase in the number of elderly individuals living alone. Living alone has been found to increase feeling of loneliness, affects social well-being, and is a significant predictor of poor health of elderly individuals. Loneliness has also been found to be a factor in the development of dementia. Companionship robots have been made to help elderly individuals cope with loneliness, however, none has been made specifically for elderly individuals living in Singapore. Many of the elderly individuals in Singapore use Hokkien (a Chinese dialect) as their main language and have difficulty understanding English. Hence, the project aims to develop a companionship robot that communicates in Hokkien to help elderly individuals in Singapore. The companionship robot, additionally, should be able to provide therapeutic engagement for the elderly individuals in the form of tracking, recognizing and detecting their emotions and react accordingly. To help these elderly individuals who are unfamiliar with technology re-connect with the world, the companionship robot aims to build a conduit for elderly individuals to be connected technologically. This is achieved through the use of QR codes for the elderly individuals to easily evoke certain functions. To help in elderly care, in the case where the elderly individuals are feeling unwell and needs to contact their family members, the companionship robot is designed to have an emergency reaction state. It is also able to timely deliver reminders the elderly individuals (i.e. reminder to take medication). The companionship robot will be built using a mBot and a Raspberry Pi 3.