A toy for an old lady
Skolkovo has created a robot for single pensioners
The problems of the older generation worry scientists in many countries. While the Japanese are creating bears to care for the elderly and patients with disabilities, Skolkovo is working on organizing leisure activities for single people of the third age. One of the resident companies of the science city was offered a project for these purposes, which is essentially a voice assistant.
The Lexi robot looks like a balloon and offers the opportunity to talk about the weather, find out the news, and talk about scientific discoveries. You can also play games with him, for example, chess, cities or sea battle. The device is trained to tell jokes, as well as to make jokes, as Siri does. According to the general director of the project from the company "Lexi" Dmitry Suvorov, the robot is endowed with human qualities – it is able to be offended, angry or happy. The company is going to provide the Mayor's office with 10 intelligent interlocutors for free until May 9: "Now we are just preparing robots for the 70th anniversary of Victory - they are "learning" poems about the war from us."
The development lasted a year and a half, says Suvorov: "The robot works from an outlet, it can be connected to the Internet and then it can, for example, track the latest news and quote them when turned on. He also knows how to search the Web for answers to difficult questions... The device will still be finalized."
When testing the demo version of the robot, the gadget gave the correct answer to the request of the capital of Egypt: "Cairo. But I prefer to talk about extraterrestrial civilizations."
Experts note that an important point is to give people an understanding that this gadget is a toy, but not a substitute for live communication. Psychologist of the Center for Systemic Family Therapy Victoria Mescherina noted that the robot can psychologically move into the category of living beings, and this is fraught with a lack of control over emotions if the robot, for example, fails.
As Leonid Pechatnikov, Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Social Development, told Izvestia, the mayor's office is ready to test the invention in May. The first 10 devices that look like a football can be placed in the centers of the Moscow Psychological Assistance Service to the population, where elderly people can rent them for free.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru20.04.2015