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Meet Garmi, a robot nurse and companion for Germany's elderly
population

As the world's population ages up, researchers believe robot
assistants will be integral to society.

By Andrew Paul | Published Mar 20, 2023 12:00 PM EDT

  * Technology
  * Health

Garmi aid robot attending to seated patient in lab
Garmi could one day help doctors remotely assist elderly patients. 
CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images
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A group of researchers at the Munich Institute of Robotics and
Machine Intelligence recently unveiled their new robo-helper, Garmi
--named after Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a ski resort town home to the
school's unit specializing in geriatronics, a relatively new field
developing cutting edge tech for elderly care. The office location
isn't an accident, either. Garmisch-Partenkirchen boasts one of
Germany's highest proportional senior populations.

[Related: Do we trust robots enough to put them in charge?]

Somewhat resembling Hyundai's Asimo on wheels, Garmi is currently in
early prototype testing, but could one day soon offer a wide array of
assistance for older patients in hospitals and nursing facilities.
One day, they could  simply work in one's own home. Abdeldjallil
Naceri, the lab's lead scientist, likened deploying Garmi to
installing ATMs around a town. "We can imagine that one day, based on
the same model, people can come to get their medical examination in a
kind of technology hub," he told Agence France-Presse.

    VIDEO: The white-coloured humanoid "Garmi" does not look much
    different from a typical robot, but for doctors, it is a "dream".
    Not only is Garmi able to perform diagnostics on patients, it can
    also provide care and treatment. pic.twitter.com/8JaKHVWDG9

    -- AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 20, 2023

From there, doctors could remotely evaluate patients' diagnostics,
which could be particularly helpful for those living in secluded
locations. In a lab demonstration, for example, researchers guided
Garmi to a patient stand-in using joystick controls. Once properly
positioned, the robot aide positioned a stethoscope to the subject's
chest, which then provided health data to the driver's computer
screen. Outside of medical facilities, Garmi could hypothetically be
deployed in residences to offer personalized help, like opening
bottles, serving meals, as well as facilitating video calls for
families or in the case of emergencies.

[Related: The next version of ChatGPT is live--here's what's new.]

Rolling out such help is not without its challenges, as Garmi is far
from the first attempt at developing effective robotic aids for
elderly populations. Although Germany contains one of the world's
fastest aging populations, Japan has long attempted to solve its own
elderly issues with robot help to mixed results, at best. Despite
these hurdles, however, researchers such as Naceri believe Garmi and
similar robots are absolutely necessary. "We must get there, the
statistics are clear that it is urgent... must be able to integrate
this kind of technology in our society," Naceri said.

Robots
news

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