Catalan-built robot can read emotions of people with intellectual disabilities

These days robots are often used to help treat people with mental difficulties, particularly the likes of autistic children and elderly people with dementia. Despite the many techniques that now exist for detecting emotions through people’s facial expressions, they cannot always be used with these patients because their mental difficulties mean they express themselves in very limited and in very different ways to people who do not suffer from such afflictions.

However, a pioneering project by researcher Jainendra Shukla, under the supervision of Domènec Puig at the Department of Computer Engineering in Tarragona’s Rovira i Virgili University (URV), has produced a robot that cannot only detect emotions in these patients but can also suggest actions to take to modify them, should they be negative, or to encourage them if they are positive.

Shukla’s research has been in close cooperation with the Ave Maria Foundation, which is dedicated to helping people with incurable intellectual disabilities. The research is focused on identifying the patient’s emotional state through such methods as registering physiological signals, tracking heart rhythms and monitoring electrical activity in the brain. The patient’s data is then sent to the robot, which is capable of interpreting their emotional state by using various algorithms.

One objective of the research is to significantly reduce the burden on care workers and to help them develop suitable activities to stimulate their patients while also offering them more personalized attention. At the same time, the research aims to improve their personal autonomy as well as their quality of life. Currently, many of these people who suffer from such mental difficulties require attention around the clock.