Senior Citizens can be Benefitted with Quality Robotic Assistance from SAM

SAM Robot

Luvozo, a newly founded company in 2013 and located in College Park, Md., is introducing autonomous robots to partially-structured environments with a huge volume of potential – skilled nursing services for senior citizens. They will be producing a ‘robot concierge’ named SAM, crafted to offer regular check-ins and non-medical care for citizens in long-term health care settings through tele-presence, autonomous navigation, and an inventive fall hazard identification system.

The viable market here is huge and to identify more, we spoke with the co-founder David Pietrocola and CEO. Stated by them, the overview of SAM is that the physical robot is an initial prototype that Luvozo utilized for pilot researches. The main function of SAM is telepresence platform. There are innumerable benefits of utilizing such robot in this situation, and none of them involve substituting individual workers. It is about offering individual attention to every citizen that they need. The robot looks after the movement from room to room all by itself, which implies that remote staff can be conversing to citizens regularly by hopping into distinct robots on varying floors, or even at varying facilities.

Local staff, can, therefore, focus on other vital things and they do not have to monitor the residents often. Also, the residents themselves can avail immense interaction. The critical point is that the local staff is no more restricted to the check-in schedules and can focus on other vital things.

According to Luvozo, “the cost of SAM is approximately one fourth of what a licensed nursing assistant costs. It is a substantial amount towards cost savings, but another thing important than this is to consider what occurs in the area shortly. Populations are low on life expectancy, and there are not enough skilled workers to look after them. Over the coming 15 years, the care providing workforce will require tripling in number, and there are already multiple troubles with a turnover.

Besides the navigation system, one of the crucial featured of SAM is Luvozo’s AFAS, also known as Automatic Fall Assessment System. With the use of RGB-D sensor system, SAM is regularly scanning the space around it for environmental hazards, things such as poor spacing and clutter that could lead troubles to people. AFAS can estimate measurements and then inform staff with particular recommendations on how to solve problems. Such capability is, in fact, one of the crucial reasons that care services are interested in utilizing SAM.

Luvozo ran a deployment with SAM at Washington, D.C. senior residing community. After this, Pietrocola informed us, they came back and said we want this for virtual, full-time here. Conversational AI is one single option that Luvozo is in view to give SAM more autonomy, but they are also identifying the idea of a family portal, where SAM can be utilized as a more conventional two-way telepresence platform that enables residents to video chat with each other on demand. Luvozo is also focused on addressing the requirements of their customers, the staff and management of retirement communities and the citizens that they look after.