The sensors IBM is developing can perceive changes in motion, audio and scent. Once fully developed, the sensors will go inside the IBM Multi-Purpose Eldercare Robot Assistant (IBM MERA), which IBM has been testing at its Austin-based “Aging in Place” lab. In addition to detecting when a senior citizen has fallen down, the MERA robot has Watson-powered speech recognition and a camera that reads facial expressions.
MERA isn’t available to the general public yet. “In the near-term, it would be more of the ambient sensors in the home starting to gather all of this data,” said Susann Keohane, a senior technologist at IBM Research.
When it does become commercially available, Ms. Keohane expects it will first be marketed in a country such as Japan, where aging among the general populous has become a national concern.
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