WHO:	Martha E. Pollack , University of Michigan
TOPIC:	An Intelligent, Adaptive Cognitive Orthotic
ABSTRACT:	The world's population is aging at a phenomenal rate, and older adults often face a range of challenges: physical, social, emotional, and cognitive. In this talk, I will describe technology being designed to mitigate some of the effects of cognitive decline, particularly memory impairment. Specifically, I will discuss Autominder, a cognitive orthotic system that can provide reminders to an older person about his or her daily activities (ADLs, IADLs, and EADLs). Where some other reminder systems function in a manner similar to alarm clocks, issuing fixed reminders at pre-specified time, in the Autominder project we employ Artificial Intelligence technology to construct rich models of a person's activities, including constraints on the times and ways in which they should be performed; to monitor the execution of those activities; to detect discrepancies between what a person is expected to do and what he or she actually is doing; and to reason about whether and when to issue reminders. Autominder is currently deployed on a mobile robot with sensors for monitoring its user's activities, but we are also exploring other platforms for the system. It is being developed as part of the Initiative on Personal Robotic Assistants for the Elderly (the Nursebot project), a collaborative, multi-university project.
WHEN:	3/3/2003 11:00:00 AM
WHERE:	Computer Studies Building 209

Events Homepage