A participant gives feedback during a ‘tiny robot’ demonstration, conducted in Vancouver last month as part of a research study by the University of British Columbia’s IDEA Lab.SUPPLIED
Online shopping should be simple. But for Fred Keating, 76, routine tasks like completing a purchase can be challenging. Since being diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in 2022, these everyday frustrations have become more frequent and harder to ignore.
“I can get on my computer, but I can’t do some of the basic steps I used to [take] to get where I need to go to find what I’m looking for,” says Mr. Keating. “The most frustrating part is it’s something I’ve done a thousand times before over the last 30 years.”
His condition underscores a growing question: Can AI and robotics help people manage daily life and take pressure off caregivers as well?
While not as life-altering as Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia, MCI can affect memory, language and judgment. Mr. Keating’s wife, Rosie, has become his primary caregiver, helping him stay on track throughout the day.
The Keatings are far from alone. With adults 65 and older projected to make up as much as a third of Canada’s population by 2073, age-related conditions are a growing reality.
Meanwhile, advances in generative AI and robotics are creating new possibilities that experts say could help ease loneliness, assist with daily living and reduce pressure on the health-care system.
Pocket-sized robots face senior challenges
Dr. Lillian Hung, founder of the University of British Columbia’s Innovation in Dementia & Aging (IDEA) Lab, says she hopes technologies will continue to be developed with older adults in mind.
Her team is studying the potential of “tiny” robots that take up little space and can be easily moved, which she says may be ideal for long-term care residents with shared rooms. The robots can do things like play music, answer questions and provide reminders to support daily routines.
The pocket-sized robots, Emo and AIBI, by LivingAI, are already available on the market. Both have small screen “faces” and cost around $350. Dr. Hung’s research focuses on whether older adults like Mr. Keating would accept them and find them useful.
When he participated in testing the robots in August, Mr. Keating’s main concerns were their small size and the extra steps required to learn how to interact with them.
Fred Keating, a patient partner at IDEA Lab with mild cognitive impairment, struggles with familiar computer tasks. He believes caring robots and AI have the potential to one day provide reliable support to adults like him and their caregivers.Ethan Cairns
“They were barely as large as an old transistor radio,” says Mr. Keating, who is a patient partner at the IDEA Lab. “And they weren’t exactly doing what they had been programmed to do, which is to tell a joke or play music from a particular era, the whole idea being to calm anxiety or agitation in the patient.”
“These robots are not designed for older adults to use,” says Dr. Hung, pointing to potential barriers such as small on-screen text and hard-to-find buttons. With help from patient partners and their families, Dr. Hung says she hopes to publish research findings that persuade makers of new technologies to better adapt them to older adults and people with dementia.
“The AI industry is just exploding,” she says. “More and more people will be developing these kinds of robots, but they may not be considering the types of functions that would be helpful for these populations.”
Designing for real lives
The next step in creating robots for care involves personalization and multitasking, says Dr. Goldie Najat, Canada Research Chair in Robots for Society at the University of Toronto. She expects these kinds of robots to be available within the next few years.
“The overall goal is to have robots embedded in our lives as assistance,” she says.
Her team is working on robots that could potentially support people throughout their entire day, from helping them to get dressed to suggesting exercise or sending an email to a loved one. As the robots interact with users, they collect information to personalize the interaction and adapt in real time.
“If you’re living with dementia, it would be able to determine your level of cognition,” says Dr. Najat, explaining that, ideally, robots would be trained to recognize when a person is struggling with an element of a task and provide additional instruction or support.
Dr. Jonathan Rose, a professor at the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, is studying AI chatbots trained in motivational interviewing to see if they can encourage users to rethink negative behaviours.
Using ChatGPT-4o, OpenAI’s large-language model, his team is testing whether a virtual therapist can provide meaningful, real-time support.
“If we can do this well, it’s a steppingstone to do all talk therapy well,” says Dr. Rose. “There just simply isn’t enough help in the outside world. We should have scientifically validated chatbots that can help us.”
His latest research involves mapping the flow of therapeutic conversations with the AI, identifying when a user is headed in the right direction. The goal is for the chatbot to use that information to adapt in real time and provide more effective motivation.
What machines can’t understand yet
Recent criticism of AI chatbots used for mental-health support highlights their limitations, including misreading emotions and offering generic responses, raising questions about whether they should detect and report suicidal ideation. Still, Dr. Rose says he sees these tools as largely positive if they mean that people are seeking advice they may not have sought out before, especially as AI companies develop more safety guardrails.
“Very occasionally something goes wrong,” says Dr. Rose. “But the net benefit is positive for medical help and advice.”
For his part, Mr. Keating believes caring robots and AI-powered assistance have the potential to one day provide reliable support to adults with cognitive impairment, especially if personalization allows household robots to handle a multitude of tasks, questions and scheduling.
“That would make the best use of the technology,” says Mr. Keating. “It’s not just my anxiety or agitation, it’s my caregiver’s anxiety and agitation. Anything that would assist in that would be a big lift off our shoulders.”
