Autonomous Navigating Robot for Detecting Falls and Risk of Falls in Nursing Home Residents With Alzheimer Disease/ADRD - Feasibility Study

Overview

This study is a feasibility study to prove that an autonomously navigating robot can patrol nursing home rooms day and night and detect if a resident has fallen, turn on ambient light at night and a video camera and allow nursing staff to view and assess the situation through the robot video camera and communicate with the resident through the robot screen.

Intervention Protocol Prior to sending the robot on patrol to detect whether a resident is attempting to get up from the chair or bed or if a resident fell, we will get residents used to the robot. We will do this through the morning musical wake up tour playing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" for a month. We will explain to the residents that the robot will come to "visit" them on a regular basis to see how they are doing and demonstrate how the robot comes and observes them. Using an infra-red camera and artificial intelligence, the robot can find where a human is located in the room and in what position. If it visits a private room and the robot "sees" that a resident is not on the floor or is on her/his wheel chair or couch or in bed and is not attempting to get up or out of bed or stand up, it will just turn around and leave the room without interrupting the resident. If it detects that a human is on the floor, it will say "This is temi the robot, I am getting help". It will turn on ambient light, alert staff and turn on the robot video camera to facilitate communication between the staff and the resident so staff can assess the situation and take proper action. If it detects that there is more than one human in the room and no human is on the floor, it will leave the room. If there is another human in the room and one human is on the floor, it will alert staff. If the second person in the room is a staff member, s/he will be able to click a button on the robot screen to send it to continue the patrol and it will leave the room and continue the patrol. If the room is a semiprivate room and there are two residents living there, the robot will check on one resident and if s/he is not at risk it will turn around and check the status of the second resident. If both are resting, the robot will leave the room without interrupting the residents. If the robot detects that a resident is attempting to get up or out of bed it will say: "this is temi the robot, please sit, I am getting help". It will turn on ambient light and its video camera and alert staff. If it detects that a resident is on the floor, it will perform the procedure described above. If a staff member is already in a semi-private room where there was a fall, s/he will be able to send the robot to continue the patrol or task as described in the private room. All falls reported by the robot will have an image captured so that the fall can be verified by research staff. Falls reported by the staff and robot will be tabulated according to their concordance: 1) Robot correctly detected and reported but staff did not record a fall; 2) staff reported fall but robot did not; 3) robot correctly and staff reported a fall; and, 4) robot reports fall: no image in robot recording to validate that a fall occurred and staff does not report a fall.

Conditions

Eligibility

Locations (1)

Outcomes