Specialties
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Residential aged Care
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Home-based dementia care
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Home-based autism care
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Community centre care
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Hospital care for people with Younger Onset Dementia (YOD)
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Education
Case study
Home-based dementia care case study
The client and location
Our client was an 88-year-old female who lived at home with her carer / daughter in Melbourne’s North-Eastern suburbs. The client has dementia which affects her thinking, behaviour and the ability to perform everyday tasks.
The brief
A socially assistive robot (named Charlie) was deployed at the client’s home for about a year. The robot was programmed to deliver personalised services to the client and provide respite to her daughter, who is the primary caregiver.
Charlie entertained Betty by singing and dancing to her favourite tunes, reading books and stories aloud and playing memory photo quizzes. The robot enriched the client’s communication with her children and grandchildren by helping her make phone calls, reading text and voice messages and projecting the videos and photos to a TV.
Charlie also provided respite to the carer. When requested, he streamed videos of the client, for safety or monitoring purposes.
Key services
We designed the following services:
Sensory enrichment services
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singing and dancing
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storytelling
Memory and cognitive services
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memory quizzes
Social connection services
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phone calls
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text, voice message vocalisation, photo, video display.
Personalised services
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The carer and family could write their own quizzes, stories and upload new music to the robot.
Connectivity functions
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the carer could interact with the robot remotely from their mobiles
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monitoring services for carer
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remotely send texts, voice messages
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remotely monitor via a video stream.
Outcomes
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improved sensory enrichment
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improved levels of concentration
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respite for carer
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improved social connections with family.
Autism case study
The client and location
A case study of two adults with autism was conducted in a household in Melbourne, Australia. The parents care for Melissa, aged 23 and Christopher, aged 25, who have autism.
The brief
Melissa is a 23 year-old-female diagnosed with autism. According to her parents, she lacks self-confidence, has trouble focusing on people and tasks, and has difficulty holding short conversations. As her mother explained, her daughter “needs a structured environment to engage her in activities that stimulate and motivate her. Without activities that engage her she will engage in obsessive-compulsive behaviours.” Existing technological devices like iPad cannot engage her for long.
Her parents wanted their daughter to be more productive at home rather than watching TV programs for most of the day. For example, they wanted her to help out with basic household chores and also improve her hygiene habits.
In contrast to Melissa, Christopher likes to interact with technological devices. His parents' concern about Christopher is his toileting habits and personal hygiene. Also, his parents wanted to help him be more motivated to learn.
A one-year trial was conducted using a social robot, Lucy (Lucy is the same type of robot as Matilda).
Key services
We designed the following services for our clients:
Sensory enrichment
We designed and delivered personalised services to reflect the participants’ lifestyle choices and choose music, songs, news and stories personalised to their taste. We also factored in: positive sporadic experiences, social needs, and family history. The services trialled included singing and dancing, interactive storytelling, playing bingo and phone calls.
Productivity and cognitive ability
For the participants, the ability to play a meaningful and productive role in their daily life was important for their emotional wellbeing. Being able to grow their knowledge, skills, engage and contribute with family and other people helps them feel useful. In this context, we designed the quiz and reminder based services. The quizzes included questions to improve the participants’ basic knowledge and understanding of toilet hygiene and help increase productivity in their daily activities. For example, the reminder service helped the participants’ participate in family chores productively.
Social connectivity
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Games (Bingo, Hoy)
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Phone calls
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Media (photo, video, voice messages) exchanges
New services
Parents/carers could write and upload their own quizzes, stories, music to the robot to personalise the services.
Outcomes
During the nine-month trial, Lucy, Melissa and Christopher communicated over 2300 times and spent more than 152 hours interacting.
The robot taught the Melissa and Christopher activities for daily living using repetitive quizzes. The robot, Lucy, also helped improve the their vocabularies and hygiene habits and their carer reported they were more likely to do their chores.
The following outcomes were achieved:
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improved sensory enrichment
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increased efficiency and motivation to do daily tasks
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increased social interaction (between people with autism and their family)
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new learning experiences.