Author: yuhengw4@illinois.edu

“There is nothing else like it. I really like all the different options you have here — the kitchen and the social elements. It’s something I haven’t found anywhere else”

One visitor shared during the Beckwith Residential Community’s visit to the McKechnie Family LIFE Home.

Students and staff from the Beckwith Residential Community visited the McKechnie Family LIFE Home to explore technologies and research environments designed to support accessibility, independence, and everyday living. 

Located on the first floor of Nugent Hall, the Beckwith Residential Community provides a supported living environment for University of Illinois students who require assistance with activities of daily living. Through its partnership with Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES), the community helps students pursue academic life while living as independently as possible. 

During the visit to the LIFE Home, Beckwith residents and staff explored a range of smart technologies and ongoing research projects. They interacted with social robots, observed assistive robotic systems, and experienced smart home features designed to support daily routines, safety, and engagement in realistic living environments. 

The group also experienced the Extended Reality (XR) Lab within the LIFE Home, where they were introduced to virtual reality applications being studied for social engagement and cognitive enrichment. In the Home Simulation space, visitors interacted with smart appliances, environmental sensors, and other technologies that demonstrate how future homes may better support a wide range of users and needs. 

The visit highlighted how interdisciplinary research at the McKechnie Family LIFE Home is helping shape more inclusive and supportive living environments through technology, design, and collaboration.  We look forward to future collaborations with Beckwith residents and staff to ensure that research gets translated into everyday life in our community. 

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! 

McKechnie Family LIFE Home hosts a Fall Open House 

Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2025 • Time: 2:00–5:00 PM 
Location: 75 Bailey Drive, Champaign, IL 61820 
Theme: Smart Living for Everyone 

On October 7, the McKechnie Family LIFE Home welcomed guests to our Fall Open House. Visitors explored the space, met researchers from across campus, and experienced hands-on demonstrations from ongoing research projects at the LIFE Home. 

This year, our theme was “Smart Living for Everyone.” We made full use of the LIFE Home’s unique advantage—a fully furnished, apartment-style space rather than a traditional lab—to showcase how smart technologies can enable smart living and support healthy aging, disability, and rehabilitation. In this familiar environment, robots such as the Stretch robot, voice assistants, smart kitchen tools, ambient sensors, and a robotic showerhead for people with disabilities can be integrated naturally in home environments. Open house guests experienced how these technologies support daily routines in a seamless way. 

LIFE Home staff, interns, and student researchers from the College of Applied Health Sciences (Human Factors and Aging Lab; Mahajan Lab; Disability, Participation and Quality of Life Research Laby) as well as the Grainger College of Engineering (Monolithic Systems Lab; Human-Centered Autonomy Lab) presented a variety of interdisciplinary research projects with interactive demos, offering visitors a hands-on experience with emerging innovations. 

The open house was attended by faculty students, and staff from across campus.  Our donors, including Jim and Karen McKechnie, Dan Fisk, and Michael Vitoux, were impressed with the demonstrations and presentations. A group of service providers from the Illinois Assistive Technology Program traveled from Springfield to explore our technologies and discuss collaborations.  We also had faculty and students visit from Illinois State University who focus on architecture and design.  Our event was held in conjunction with Champaign-Urbana Active Aging Week and we were happy to have community participants as well. 

Watch the video below for highlights from the event and stay tuned for more updates on our research and outreach activities. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us. If you missed it, we are already planning our spring open house and we look forward to seeing you there! 

We are proud to share that a paper co-authored by members of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home research community has received the 2024 Ergonomics Journal Best Paper Award, presented by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF). This annual award recognizes the most impactful article published in Ergonomics over the past year.

The winning paper, “Immersive participatory design of assistive robots to support older adults” was co-authored by Samuel Olatunji, Vy Nguyen, Maya Cakmak, Aaron Edsinger, Charles Kemp, Wendy Rogers, and Harshal Mahajan. The authors included LIFE Home staff as well as our collaborators at Hello Robot who are the developers of the Stretch robot.  The journal article highlighted the value of participatory methods in designing collaborative robots that meet the real-world needs of older adults and caregivers.

This recognition of this project reflects the LIFE Home team’s continued commitment to inclusive, human-centered design.  This work was funded by the National Institute on Aging (National Institutes of Health).

Congratulations to the entire team!
 Learn more

The Champaign West Rotary Club invited Dr. Wendy Rogers, Director of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home, and Dr. Shafiqul Islam, Postdoctoral Research Associate, for an engaging in-person presentation and virtual demonstration, highlighting the capabilities of the LIFE Home and how it is aimed at improving the quality of life for people of all ages and abilities. 

Attendees learned how the LIFE Home’s simulated environments—living room, kitchen/dining, bedroom, den, extended reality lab, tele-research lab, and personal care research spaces—enable researchers to test smart home technologies, robotics, and digital health tools in realistic settings. The LIFE Home team demonstrated their top-of-the-line smart appliances, connected home systems, and an array of assistive robots, including the Stretch assistive robot, Gita personal carrier, social robots Moxie and Misty, and Paro the therapeutic seal.

Dr. Rogers shared current research collaborations with industry and academic partners, such as developing hands-free control systems for assistive robots, designing soft robotic bathing devices for older adults, and exploring virtual reality for cognitive engagement among older adults. These projects are supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, and university-based funding programs.

The presentation emphasized the importance of community engagement, with upcoming events such as the LIFE Home Fall Open House planned for October 7 (2-5pm), offering the public a chance to tour the facility and experience the technology first-hand. Dr. Islam provided virtual tour of the LIFE Home using the Ohmni telepresence robot.

The event was held at the Terminal Building in downtown Champaign and was attended by approximately 50 members and their guests from the club.  Following the presentation, they asked a lot of questions and were very interested in and supportive of the mission of the LIFE Home.

As part of a university-wide initiative to spotlight innovative research, the University of Illinois Applied Health Sciences Advancement office coordinated with Illinois Public Media (IPM) to interview Dr. Wendy Rogers, as a Shahid and Ann Carlson Khan Professor of Applied Health Sciences.

Dr. Rogers is the Director of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home and leads groundbreaking research at the intersection of aging, technology, and human-centered design. She is also the Director of the Human Factors and Aging Laboratory.  Her work explores critical topics such as design for aging, technology acceptance, human-robot interaction, cognitive aging, aging-in-place, and aging with disabilities.

During the interview, Dr. Rogers discussed the mission of the LIFE Home in providing infrastructure that supports interdisciplinary research for people of all ages and abilities. Her leadership and vision have positioned the LIFE Home as a model to advance the translation of innovations that will support independent living, healthcare needs, social interaction, and everyday activities in the home.  She also shared examples of her research that is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).  

This feature aims to elevate public awareness of Dr. Rogers’ contributions to health, aging, and technology research and how her Khan Professorship has supported these efforts.

The LIFE Home staff is pleased to welcome Dr. Md Shafiqul Islam to our team as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. He joined us in June 2025.

Dr. Islam holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech, where he specialized in system evaluation and inclusive design. As the postdoctoral associate at the LIFE Home, Dr. Islam will be responsible for supporting the LIFE Home Assistant Director of Research in developing industry and faculty research collaborations for the LIFE Home, managing research communications, developing innovative way to provide LIFE Home tours, maintaining the smart technology infrastructure of the LIFE Home and providing mentorship and supervision to the LIFE Home interns, students or volunteers.

Prior to starting his Ph.D., Dr. Islam also worked as a Production Engineer for Avery Dennison, gaining experience in process improvement and system efficiency.

We arere excited to have Dr. Islam on board and look forward to the impact he’ll bring to our interdisciplinary efforts!

 Learn more about Dr. Islam and his research

Email: shafiqul@illinois.edu

Three student teams were recognized in the 2024 TechSAge PITCH Competition for their innovative uses of the Stretch Robot, developed by Hello Robot, to support people aging with disabilities.  Dr. Harshal Mahajan – Assistant Director of Research for the LIFE Home – coordinated the competition.

The winning project, was called HYGI+, submitted by by Shuoning (Stone) Shi and Yuheng (Leo) Wang (School of Art & Design).  They proposed a modular cleaning attachment featuring a vacuum, motorized brushes, and waste disposal—designed to clean elevated surfaces like stoves and counters. It aims to improve hygiene and independence for older adults.
Prize: $1,000 + LIFE Home resources

Two projects received honorable mentions:

• Multi-Modal Hazard Detection (John Pohovey, Maria Lusardi & Ananya Yammanuru, Grainger Engineering) – proposed a navigation system that helps Stretch detect and manage indoor hazards like cables and rugs.
  Prize: $500 + LIFE Home resources
• Pressure Ulcer Detection and Prevention (Chieh Wang & Melissa Kuo, Applied Health Sciences) – proposed a camera-based intervention using Stretch to monitor and help treat pressure ulcers.
  Prize: $500

Read the full TechSAge article:
 2024 Stretch Robot PITCH Competition Winners