How Genie the Robot is Delivering More than Face Value to Cornwall Housing in 2023
Using Voice and Touch Commands plus Video Links to Deliver a Range of Services
A residential care home Anvil Court in Camelford is the latest site to get a GenieHub through Independent Living part of Cornwall Housing. The GenieHub features a first generation robot called Genie developed by Bristol based Service Robotics.
Touch and Voice Command
Genie uses voice and touch commands and is able to provide a range of services on this platform. These range from medical assistance and social care to logging housing issues. Genie is able to help remind users to take their meds for example and will also in future be able to enable appointments using the video link to health practitioners. A calendar is available where you are able to set reminders for things such as private appointments.
Combatting Loneliness
Originally developed to combat loneliness Genie has the ability to recognise the mood of people through capturing several people and aggregating their expressions. It can also start a conversation and notice if you haven’t interacted with it for say 1 hour – it would for example offer to play a game with you.
Security is of utmost concern so it isn’t connected to the internet all the time unlike Alexa.
Genie Hubs
The GenieHub is a small private room where residents are able to login to their profile with Genie and interact with a Cornwall Housing companion using a video link to gain assistance. Eventually the plan would be to have these installed in private rooms and houses to help people gain virtual assistance through their own private Genie. It’s designed to be very simple to use so that older people who are not used to using smart phones are able to navigate it.
The efficiencies it brings are enormous when you look at the number of in person appointments that could be transformed by using this technology it is really encouraging. This would mean a significant carbon footprint reduction as well as savings in cost and resources. In person appointments would then be used where they are needed most particularly needed in health and social care. Genie also offers a degree of privacy and independence to users as it is less intrusive than having people visit – for those with compromised immune systems it also has obvious benefits.
The technology is proving useful to those with dementia in early stages as it can prompt reminders and also give you access to the date and time as a default screen if you wish rather than a face.
Future Uses & Future Proofing
In future the 1st generation Genie is future proofed so that when the 2nd generation Genie is developed it will receive the update through the cloud and have the extra functionality.
Access to users online shopping accounts will be enabled in future (although no bank details are stored within this system itself for security) so people can shop for their groceries online on it too as long as they have an account set up with say Sainsbury’s or Tesco for example.
Other features of Genie in development include the ability to recognise teh sound of fire alarms and smoke alarms or the sound of breaking glass.
Read more about the GenieConnect service by Service Robotics at https://www.genieconnect.co.uk/
There are so many potential applications of this technology.
What would you like to see Genie used for and why?