The McKechnie Family LIFE Home hosted academic leaders/fellows from the Big Ten Alliance – Academic Leadership Program (ALP). LIFE Home staff organized a showcase of technologies and the research spaces as well as demonstrations from ongoing LIFE Home projects during the event. The ALP fellows had the opportunity to interact with social robots “Moxie”, “Paro”, “Misty”, and “Jibo”. One research example is the use of Moxie to engage older adults in conversation about structured topics to obtain language samples for clinical assessments of cognitive function. This project is funded by a pilot grant from CREATE, which is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research center.
ALP fellows also had the chance to see GITA, which is a cargo carrying follower robot, and Ohmni, a telepresence robot. Student researchers also provided demonstrations of the Stretch robot that is being used for assisting older adults as well as individuals with disabilities through various methods of control, including remote, voice, and head-gestures. This research is funded by NIH as well as a College of Applied Health Sciences pilot grant.
In the LIFE Home Extended Reality (XR) lab we showed the fellows a virtual reality (VR) research project for older adults. They experienced a travel exploration program and a seated VR bowling application. This project is also part of the CREATE Center and the goal is to enable older adults to use VR in their homes to enhance social engagement and provide cognitive enrichment.
In the Home Simulation space of the LIFE Home, the fellows observed a prototype robotic showerhead that is being developed with an interdisciplinary teams of rehabilitation specialists, industrial engineers, human factors psychologists, and industrial designers. The project is part of the TechSAge center, funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.
ALP fellows also interacted with the smart appliances and sensors that are placed in the Home Simulation space. These interactions gave them a sense of what it will feel like to live with smart technologies embedded in our homes.
LIFE Home staff also showed other research spaces, i.e., the Den, the Bedroom, the Fisk Interview Room, the Tele-research Lab, and the Observation & Control Room, explaining different funded ongoing and previous projects in these spaces. The fellows enjoyed their visit and asked a lot of questions. We hope this leads to future collaborations across Big 10 Universities!
