It goes without saying that getting dressed is one of the most critical steps in our daily routine. But long practice has made it second nature, and people suffering from dementia may lose that familiarity, making dressing a difficult and frustrating process. This smart dresser from NYU is meant to help them through the process while reducing the load on overworked caregivers.
It may seem that replacing responsive human help with a robotic dresser is a bit insensitive. But not only are there rarely enough caregivers to help everyone in a timely manner at, say, a nursing care facility, the residents themselves might very well prefer the privacy and independence conferred by such a solution.
“Our goal is to provide assistance for people with dementia to help them age in place more gracefully, while ideally giving the caregiver a break as the person dresses – with the assurance that the system will alert them when the dressing process is completed or prompt them if intervention is needed,” explained the project’s leader, Winslow Burleston, said in an NYU news release.
DRESS, as the team calls the device, is essentially a 5-drawer dresser with a tablet on top that serves as both display and …read more
Source:: TechCrunch Gadgets
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