Stevie Is A Nice Robot That Wants to Help The Elderly

So back in 2018, we took the time to travel to Rome for the Maker Faire, one of the most significant events for inventors around the world. At that event, we have had the chance to met the robot named Stevie. He is a social robot made by a group of robotics engineers at Dublin Trinity College.

Meet Stevie the social robot

At first, they only designed the robot to help and support the elder and disabled people in Ireland. So the group has made Stevie into a nice, friendly model and with many human-like features. He could do some autonomous tasks and some with human control. His first tasks are to do the routine work in the nursing facilities.

Meet Stevie

Stevie has a head and two arms which allow him to provide social feedback to other workers in the vicinity. He has all the tools he needs like body language, facial expressions. Lights and sounds to respond according to all the situations that he might encounter.

He is quite mobile and also equipped with cameras and many tactile, inertial, depth, and voltage sensors. All of these tools allow him to communicate effectively with the surrounding environment. He still has many hidden potentials with the powerful onboard processors. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth also included which give it the potential to connect many devices. Stevie is programmed to also connect socially with the residents aside from just performing regular tasks.

When developing this robot, the development team has spent a lot of time to conduct various studies on many residents. And their team is combined with technical experts and as well as many caregivers and nurses.

Professor McGinn of the research team has also stated that this robot is to improve health services and care for old people, not to replace human care.

Smart home and Stevie

One extra feature of Stevie is that we can connect him to our house. His connectivity ability allows us to link him to many smart appliances and a central controller of the home. With that, he could help to monitor the house, notify and offer changes to users.

The team expects to launch the robot at the begin of 2021. From now on they will keep on testing the robot if different care facilities in the U.S and Ireland.