54 tIme November 4, 2019
simple and practical: for example, its face
could double as a video- conferencing screen,
and it could go door-to-door taking meal or-
ders on the touchscreen attachment that can
be mounted to its body. Other functions could
mean the difference between life and death.
The robot can recognize voice commands
like Help me and, were it fully integrated into
Knollwood’s IT system, could alert staff to a
resident in distress.
The prototype made for Knollwood was
deliberately designed as a bot-of-all-trades.
The idea was for researchers to observe how
residents interacted with the current iteration
of Stevie, then go back to the lab and perfect the
functions people seemed to want from it most.
Conor McGinn, an assistant professor at Trin-
ity College Dublin and Stevie’s lead engineer,‘
Ha ha.That is agood one.I mightuse it.’
It’s no small feat to craft a technological fix
for this problem that is cost-effective; supports
human care workers without taking their jobs;
and reliably attends to the social, emotional
and physical needs of aging people in a way
that respects their dignity and privacy. But if
you were going to try, the starting point might
look a lot like what’s happening at Knollwood.
Some 300 reSidentS live at Knollwood, in
wings organized by the level of assistance re-
quired. Those with more serious physical and
cognitive impairments live in hospital- style
rooms with round-the-clock nursing care.
Those in generally good health come and go as
they please from a wing of apartments known
as Independent Living. With its decorated unit
doors and bulletin boards crammed with no-
tices for outings and special events, the Inde-
pendent Living wing evokes a college dorm
whose residents are partial to walkers and coifs
reminiscent of the late Barbara Bush. A placard
on the door of apartment 232 bears the current
occupant’s name: Stevie.
There are as many different kinds of robots
currently used in care settings as there are tasks
for them to perform. Already there are robotic
exoskeletons that help staff lift patients, and
delivery robots that zip around hospital hall-
ways like motorized room-service carts. Doll-
like therapy robots comfort and calm patients
agitated by the disorienting symptoms of de-
mentia. Not far from Knollwood, pharmacists
at Walter Reed National Military Medical Cen-
ter in Bethesda, Md., work alongside a robotic
dispensing system when filling prescriptions.
Stevie is a “socially assistive” robot, de-
signed to help users by engaging with them so-
cially as well as physically. The 4-ft. 7-in. robot
is equipped with autonomous navigation. It can
roll through Knollwood’s hallways unassisted,
though for insurance reasons—and to avoid
even the remote risk of a collision in a com-
munity where falls can be life-threatening—
Stevie never leaves its room without a handler.
The voice command Hey Stevie activates the
robot, similar to how the wake word Alexa acti-
vates Amazon’s home assistant. Stevie responds
to other words with speech, gestures and head
movements. Tell the robot you’re sick, for ex-
ample, and it slumps forward with a sorrow-
ful frown on its LED- screen face and says, “I’m
sorry to hear that.” Pay Stevie a compliment,
and the screen reverts to a smile. When at rest,
its head tilts gently and its digital brown eyes
blink, patiently waiting for the next command.
A robot like Stevie can be useful in care
homes in a number of ways. Some are fairly