Problem
Neurodegenerative dementia is a disease that progressively deteriorates brain functionality. One of the most common symptoms of dementia is memory loss. In addition, patients usually lose the ability to solve problems or control their emotions and present changes in personality and normal behavior. Covid19 exposed the failure of our care provider systems for this vulnerable population. Over time, people with dementia are unable to properly perform the basic activities of daily living such as maintaining personal hygiene or food. One type of dementia is the Alzheimer disease. Estimates pointed that in 2006 there would be 26.6 million people worldwide with Alzheimer’s disease, and this figure will be three times bigger by 2050. On that date Alzheimer will affect 1 in 85 people of the total world population. And 40% of them will be in an advanced state of disease, requiring a level of care that involves high consumption of resources While there is no causal cure for the disease, palliative medication and non-pharmacological therapy are the only ways patients can improve symptoms and slow down its progression. GlobalhealthUSA’s studies indicate that the use of robots helps to reduce the severity of the disease and enable patients to at-home or in nursing homes happier.

Overview

GlobalhealthUSA is developing a Smart Assistive Robotic Software Platform [SARP], for Alzheimer’s and, Dementia patients and their care providers. The software runs on GlobalhealthUSA’s 5G connected, Smart Assistive Robotic Hardware [GSAR], developed by the GlobalhealthUSA. Our proposed platform use “zero effort technologies,” which require little or no effort from the people who use it. Our prototype Smart Assistive Robot Software architecture connects 4 software cores [FIG-1]: a Machine Learning Core, in charge of enriching collected knowledge by taking track of interactions and events to learn the particular needs of a the patient and build a model of his/her possible behaviors; A Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Core is responsible for processing information coming from the environment. The Planning and Acting Core is the part of the architecture responsible for actually interacting with the patient and an Environment core that collects data and integrates with smart home devices.

Our SARP use Amazon Robo-Maker to leverage AWS IoT Greengrass to deploy our SARP. AWS IoT Greengrass seamlessly extends AWS to edge devices like our SARP, so SARP can execute locally, while still using AWS for management, analytics, and durable storage.

5G connectivity when combined with MEC (Mobile or Multi-access Edge Compute), fundamentally change our SARP operations. With massive and low-latency connectivity, SARP offloads its computing and intelligence to edge servers that have much greater capacity and scalability, easier maintenance, and better up-gradability. SARP runs embedded applications so it functions even if the connected network is down.