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Journalism of Courage
South Korean company Hyodol has come up with a way to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to beat loneliness among elders with dementia — it has invented a ‘social robot’ priced at $1,800 (about Rs 1.5 lakh).
The South Korean government is reported to have deployed around 7,000 Hyodol dolls to keep senior citizens ‘company’ and remind them to take medications. Loneliness among senior citizens is a growing social issue in South Korea.
While the dolls look like cuddly soft toys, their advanced language processing and ability to recognise emotions, talk, and play music can offer some form of engagement to seniors.
According to the company, the robot named Hyodol is an AI care robot that offers customised care for seniors. The robot does this by relying on data collected by living and having conversations with them. “Hyodol helps digitally disadvantaged individuals to live happier and healthier lives through the convenience of digital technology,” reads the official website. The company works with an Emotional AI system which it claims provides emotional care that feels familiar and realistic to users.
The doll can hold full conversations and it comes with a companion app and web monitoring platform for caretakers to monitor remotely. Besides, it comes with safety features that can raise an alert when no movement has been detected for a certain period of time. Essentially, the doll is always watching the user.
It also comes with touch interaction, check-ins, a health coach, voice messages, 24-hour voice reminders, music, quizzes, exercise suggestions, and more. Moreover, caregivers with access to the app will be able to send and receive voice messages, make group announcements, and monitor motion detection.
The robot also continuously monitors the health condition of its users through health Q&A two times a day.
What about the data it collects?
The company said the Hyodol robot collects verbal/nonverbal data for 24 hours from the users through AI. While the company has stated that it prioritises user privacy and safety and strictly observes data protection, it has not mentioned how it does this. This is a potential area of concern, as the data collected by these dolls could lead to security vulnerabilities.
The AI robot can hold conversations owing to the large language model that has been integrated into it.
The robots provide convenient and easily managed intelligent services for users and are easy to develop and debug. Besides, the AI robot can be linked to smart home devices and comes with an interface for easy interactions for all users.
Hyodol is not alone, in the past two years, there have been several robots with similar use cases. In October 2023, indianexpress.com reported about the social robot Nao developed by Kazakh company April. Nao has been developed to assist in autism therapy.
