Robotics: Enhancing veterans home residents’ health with robots – The Chief News

What researchers find out about the use of robots in an Oregon project, could be used to enhance health care for veterans and others in Columbia County.

Oregon State University researchers are partnering with the Edward C. Allworth Veterans Home in Lebanon, Oregon. The project is a federally funded effort to see if robots can improve residents health and wellness by engaging them in physical and mental exercise.

OSU College of Engineering Assistant Professor of Robotics Naomi Fitter poses with robots for this photo.

Naomi Fitter, assistant professor of robotics in the OSU College of Engineering, is leading the $800,000 study, funded by the National Science Foundations National Robotics Initiative through the National Institutes of Healths National Institute on Aging.

The exact nature of the study will take shape after interviews with veterans home staff and residents are completed, Fitter said. At this stage of the project, Fitter is envisioning studying physical therapy regimens and other physical and cognitive exercise routines game-ified, enticing and entertaining being led by a human-sized robot.

The home already has virtual reality setups as part of its physical therapy facilities, Fitter said. We want to see if a physically present robot agent, there in the same space, can be an improvement. Residents can do their exercise routines with a buddy, possibly with more engagement, especially between physical therapists visits when human support for exercise practice is not typically available.

Fitter says a robot in common areas of the home could perform exercises with the veterans, encouraging them to be physically active in a group environment that also may benefit them socially.

And well strive toward minimizing the difficulty of operating the system because weve learned that can be a real pain point, a barrier to adoption, Fitter said. Weve also learned that physical robots have more clout and motivational ability compared to virtual reality systems, or tablets or computers.

In addition, the researchers will look at whether other types of robot interventions can be helpful in a skilled nursing environment such as the veterans home for example, alleviating nurse burnout by handling some of the responses when residents press their call buttons.

We have robots in the lab that might be able to help with that type of thing, Fitter said. We can also look at whether telepresence robots can help the residents videoconference with friends and relatives. And there are pettable seal robots that can be used to help with dementia care, to provide comfort at important times of day, like sundown.

Bill Smart, professor of mechanical engineering and robotics, is a co-principal investigator, and Carolyn Aldwin, director of the Center for Healthy Aging Research in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences, is on the research team as well.

It seems most likely well explore the breadth of applications to see what from our current arsenal might be most useful, and see what other needs and ideas veterans home staff might have that we did not think of in our initial brainstorming, Fitter said.

The Edward C. Allworth Veterans Home.

The Edward C. Allworth Veterans Home is named for OSU alumnus Maj. Edward Christopher Allworth, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor in World War I for leading a canal crossing that led to the capture of 100 enemy troops during the Meuse-Argonne Battle.

Allworth graduated from Oregon Agricultural College, as OSU was then known, in 1916. In 1925 he became the first director of the Memorial Union, a position he held until his retirement in 1963.

Allworth died in Portland in 1966 and is buried in Crystal Lake Cemetery in Corvallis.

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Robotics: Enhancing veterans home residents' health with robots - The Chief News