Empathetic Robot for the Elderly using Machine Learning
Varsha Ryali1, Sristi Kumari2, Syed Mahmood Nabeel Anwar3, Sheela SV4
1Varsha Ryali, Department of Information Science and Engineering, BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore (Karnataka), India.
2Sristi Kumari, Department of Information Science and Engineering, BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore (Karnataka), India.
3Syed Mahmood Nabeel Anwar, Department of Information Science and Engineering, BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore (Karnataka), India.
4Dr. Sheela S V, Professor, Department of Information Science and Engineering, BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore (Karnataka), India.
Manuscript received on 16 June 2022 | Revised Manuscript received on 23 June 2022 | Manuscript Accepted on 15 July 2022 | Manuscript published on 30 July 2022 | PP: 8-11 | Volume-12 Issue-3, July 2022 | Retrieval Number: 100.1/ijsce.C35780712322 | DOI: 10.35940/ijsce.C3578.0712322
Open Access | Ethics and Policies | Cite | Mendeley | Indexing and Abstracting
© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: According to WHO estimates, there is a growing population of over 1 billion people aged above 60 years of age. There has been an increasing shortage of caregivers for the aging populations. This has opened a market of USD 7 billion dollars in senior care alone. In a struggle to care for our elderly and capitalize from this industry in efficiency, this paper presents an empathetic robot that can make day-to-day activities hassle free. It is a voice assistant that can detect the emotion of the speaker and reply with contextual awareness to bridge the superstitious gap between the elderly and technology. It achieves this with multi-modal classification of emotion using audio and text. i) Machine learning model using Librosa to engineer features and Support vector classifier (SVC) , ii) BERT based model using transfer learning to categorize text. The robot can also set reminders for appointments and medicine intake to help with forgetfulness. The robot is customizable by a caregiver or loved one through the web application where details of any messages, reminders, descriptions of prescriptions could be entered. The robot comes with a pill dispenser that can rotate and dispense pills at the correct time and also notify the senior through the speaker. A raspberry pi is used to convert the speech to text and vice versa. The design of this robot paves the path to providing a realistic, care-giving experience to the elderly.
Keywords: The robot can also set reminders for appointments and medicine intake to help with forgetfulness.
Scope of the Article: Machine Learning