Meet RAS,
the home support robot

RAS is the first robot researchers at WSU’s Center for Advanced Studies in Adaptive Systems (CASAS) have tried to incorporate into their smart home environment. Interacting with smart home sensors, RAS can determine where residents are, what they are doing and whether they need assistance. Tasks RAS can carry our include navigating through rooms and around obstacles to find people, providing video instructions on simple tasks, and guiding people to their medication.

 

“RAS combines the convenience of a mobile robot with the activity detection technology of a WSU smart home to provide assistance in the moment, as the need for help is detected,” said Bryan Minor, a postdoctoral researcher in the WSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “While we are still in an early stage of development, our initial results with RAS have been promising. The next step in the research will be to test RAS’ performance with a group of older adults.” The aim of these studies will be to clarify people’s expectations and preferences regarding the robot.

 

Diane Cook, Regents professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of CASAS and Maureen Schmitter Edgecombe, a WSU professor of psychology, have been leading CASAS researchers in the development of smart home technologies that could enable elderly adults with memory problems and other impairments to live independently for over a decade.

 

“Upwards of 90 percent of older adults prefer to age in place as opposed to moving into a nursing home,” says Cook. “We want to make it so that instead of bringing in a caregiver or sending these people to a nursing home, we can use technology to help them live independently on their own.” In the USA, almost half of all adults over the age of 85 require assistance with daily tasks such as preparing meals and taking medication. Currently, the annual cost for this assistance is almost $2 trillion – and the number of adults over 85 expected to triple by 2050. Cook and Schmitter Edgecombe hope that technologies like RAS and the WSU smart home will make it easier for the elderly to live alone and alleviate some of the financial strain on the healthcare system. In February of 2019, the first in-home study with a younger adult receiving support for everyday activities was completed and in April, the first in-home study with an older adult resident was started.