Emotionally Supportive Virtual Assistant Could Help People With Alzheimer’s Disease

There has been a breakthrough in technology with the new Emotionally Supportive Virtual assistant called ACT@Home for people who have Alzheimers disease. ACT@home is an intelligent assistant founded by the computer scientists at the University of Waterloo. The design form of this virtual assistant is to help people with the disease to do daily tasks based on an emotional standpoint, such as facial expressions, move, voice, and posture. For the people who are not really familiar with Alzheimer’s Disease, it is a disease that effects the mind with loss of memory. There are specific medicines that help the progression of the memory loss as well as clinical trials. As the disease progresses, many problems develop such as a decline in the relationship between behavior and logical reasoning. It creates a challenge for daily living. When the research was actually being conducted for this virtual assistant, scientists actually interviewed caregivers as well as Alzheimer patients to better understand the interaction between different people. The goal of this virtual assistant model is to create a stage of independence for the people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, as well as providing help with the caregivers. The team of scientists have won multiple awards for a paper that represents the idea and goal of this main project.