One meter and 70 in height, expressive eyes, regular features, graceful movements, authoritative but gentle voice. And wheels for feet. His name is RoBee, he is a cognitive humanoid robot and has just been hired at the Roman neurorehabilitation and research hospital FSL Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS.
RoBee is about to participate in a one-year project involving Santa Lucia and Oversonic (an Italian company specializing in the design and construction of cognitive humanoid robots and which gave birth to RoBee) which wants to evaluate how much the robot can support healthcare professionals and patients in a context of neurorehabilitation, and how to further develop the machine to make it even more useful and efficient in care settings. Even more human, after all …
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One project and five experiments
The FSL-Oversonic collaboration involves various Santa Lucia experts: doctors, psychologists, speech therapists, nurses, researchers, neurorehabilitation specialists and company engineers: “It will be divided into 5 sub-projects: three of experimental research and two of clinical research – explains Fabrizio Piras, psychologist and researcher of the Santa Lucia Foundation -. Three will evaluate the changes from a neurophysiological and functional brain point of view that derive from the interaction between man and machine and two will have a more clinical soul, that is, they will have the aim of understanding how appropriate it will be to use the humanoid robot to support the daily clinical activities of the neurorehabilitation, both from a cognitive and neuromotor point of view. We hope – concludes Piras – to obtain good results within a reasonable time “.
Who and what RoBee does
“We wanted to build a cognitive machine, that is, capable of contextualising, understanding and interacting with the world in a logical way. And that would have the benefit of the computing power of a machine (ability to recognize video, to perform analysis in real time, to access basic of data via the web …) and in the meantime was also able to interact with spaces and people, this RoBee can do it “, explains Fabio Pugliaphysicist, president of Oversonic Robotics.
Patients at the Santa Lucia suffer from severe lesions of the nervous system, and have consequences on both the cognitive and motor side: they have suffered strokes, are suffering from multiple sclerosis, are victims of serious trauma, for example, and need continuous rehabilitation and medical attention. : control of pressure, heart rate, temperature.
A robot can collect vital signs, and then a machine can signal nurses if something is wrong by analyzing a series of values that require attention. Or more simply, it can accompany a patient to radiology or to the gym: “A robot can free healthcare personnel from repetitive, routine tasks, but in addition to this, it can replace therapists where possible to stimulate patients and enhance rehabilitation exercises – he says. Carlo Caltagirone, neurologist and scientific director of the FSL -. Carrying out this project within the hospital will allow us to evaluate both the interaction with patients suffering from cognitive impairment and the ability of robotics to become a concrete support for some professionals, in particular speech therapists and neuropsychologists who deal with cognitive neurorehabilitation “.
“Furthermore – explains Caltagirone – through non-invasive techniques such as neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation and the analysis of brain bioelectric signals with EEG, we want to understand the reactions that the interaction with a humanoid robot causes on the brain, which is a plastic organ. “.
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Mirror neurons and robots
Laura Serra she is the head of the neuroimaging laboratory of the FSL and is the head of the sub-project that deals with evaluating the changes in brain connectivity in patients and operators who will interact with the robot: “We want to understand if the brain, when it interacts with the machine, activates networks neural different from those that turn on during the interaction between human beings “says the expert.
The human-human interaction is mapped, we know it, we know that when two people interact, mirror neurons are activated: “And now – confirms Serra – we want to find out if mirror neurons are activated even when the interaction is between humanoid robots and beings. human and if this interaction is reflected in a modification of brain activity, which we will measure with functional magnetic resonance before and after the human-machine contact “.
In this sense the humanoid figure can help. And RoBee is very reminiscent of a human being, in particular they strike the eyes, which are well cared for and closely resemble the human eye and this is an important aspect because a long series of information passes through the eye-eye interaction “especially for some types. of patients, we think for example of people with autism but not only them “, says Serra.
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A robot does not sleep
A machine can benefit the patient in a therapeutic sense: a robot, although intelligent, never gets tired, never gets stressed, never sleeps, is active 24 hours a day, “a series of features that can enhance rehabilitation activities, prolong it, in patients with injuries, with neurodegenerative diseases, with speech and motor difficulties. We will start with very selected patients: aphasics undergoing speech rehabilitation, hemiplegics in motor rehabilitation, patients with Alzheimer’s in very early stages and we will evaluate them with functional magnetic resonances before and after the interaction with robot and we will make a comparison “, concludes Serra.
Social robots
“Social robots, like RoBee, are destined to become an integral part of our life – adds Puglia -. Unlike autonomous service robots, capable of carrying out a limited number of tasks without human supervision, these new systems have advanced skills. manipulation of human-like objects and cognitive processes. Through multi-modal interfaces, which combine the use of language, gestures, facial expressions, RoBee is able to learn behaviors, and then move independently: it represents the future of a technology that does not replace the human being but aims to be effective support and replacement only for the most burdensome and risky operations “.
“In recent months we have experimented RoBee essentially in industrial environments for largely mechanical operations – explains Paolo Denti, CEO of Oversonic – With this project a new development frontier opens, both on the product side, with the first effective implementation of RoBee in a relational context, which enhances his cognitive competence, both on the research side, thanks to the accreditation of a reality such as the Santa Lucia Foundation, the highest Italian excellence in the field of neuroscience “.