Speaker 1: One of my greatest fears is doing something ridiculous in
Speaker 1: my house late at night, because you know how I
Speaker 1: like to shuffle around and I hurt myself and no
Speaker 1: one hears me call for help. You know, No, that
Speaker 1: is scary, right it is. But what if instead of
Speaker 1: laying on the ground needing life alert, there was a
Speaker 1: robot that could catch me before I even feel I
Speaker 1: love that idea.
Speaker 2: So today we're gonna be talking elder care engineering and
Speaker 2: the soft, squishy future of robotic support. I'm TT and
Speaker 2: I'm Zakiah and this is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs,
Speaker 2: a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science with pop culture
Speaker 2: and a healthy dose of friendship. In today's lab, we're
Speaker 2: talking about aging in America and the technology that could
Speaker 2: help us stay safer for longer. Our guest is Roberto Bowley,
Speaker 2: a mechanical engineering PhDc student MIT who's designing a robot
Speaker 2: that can literally catch you when you fall. It's called Ebar.
Speaker 2: But before we meet the robot, let's set the stage.
Speaker 1: What do we know? So between twenty ten and twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the US Census told us that the over sixty five
Speaker 1: population saw the largest and fastest growth spurt that has
Speaker 1: seen since to like late eighteen hundreds, and according to
Speaker 1: the Urban Institute, by twenty forty, we're expecting one in
Speaker 1: five Americans to be over sixty five. And what do
Speaker 1: we want to know?
Speaker 2: Well, I want to know what kind of tech could
Speaker 2: actually help? Like, how do you build a robot that
Speaker 2: doesn't feel scary, you know, not like the ones that
Speaker 2: from I robot that are going to turn on you?
Speaker 1: And yeah, what were they thinking? Or that's too invasive?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what does it take to go from a great
Speaker 2: idea to a real life idea that's manifesting in front
Speaker 2: of you, that is safety certified and in someone's living room.
Speaker 1: I think we're ready to jump right into the dissection.
Speaker 3: My name is Roberto Bolly. I'm a graduate student at
Speaker 3: MIT studying mechanical engineering.
Speaker 1: Where do you think some of our biggest disconnects are
Speaker 1: between people's hopes for what that kind of aging looks
Speaker 1: like and what our current caregiving support infrastructure delivers today.
Speaker 3: So we actually we did a lot of interviews with
Speaker 3: elderly people where do they need support? What kind of
Speaker 3: support are they looking for? And we found like virtually
Speaker 3: everybody we interviewed once to Asian place at home, Like
Speaker 3: that's like, I feel like the goal. It's like, you
Speaker 3: get older, you live at home, you have hobbies like
Speaker 3: gardening or moving around the home, and you know, you
Speaker 3: just gracefully age in place. The reality is that something
Speaker 3: like thirty or forty percent of elderly people fall each year.
Speaker 3: Oh and oftentimes when they fall it's like a debilitating injury. Like,
Speaker 3: if you're young, you fall, it's not to make a deal.
Speaker 3: You might get a bruise or something. But if you're
Speaker 3: old and you fall, you can sometimes break a hip.
Speaker 3: And so unfortunately, what we see is a lot of
Speaker 3: people get shuttled into nursing care or long term care,
Speaker 3: and they often don't like it. They want to go
Speaker 3: back to their homes. Sometimes they get suboptimal care because
Speaker 3: there's also a big shortage of caregivers.
Speaker 2: Can you clarify what age is elderly?
Speaker 1: Ah?
Speaker 3: I think in our lab we've been looking at people
Speaker 3: over sixty five, but there's no really good definition. Because
Speaker 3: I met someone who is seventy five and who bikes
Speaker 3: like eight miles a day is in probably better shape
Speaker 3: than me, but more than like an age we're looking
Speaker 3: at like a subgroup. So we say people who have
Speaker 3: like medium muscle strength, so they're able to hold onto
Speaker 3: handlebars or do activities of daily living, but they may
Speaker 3: lose their balance or they have a tendency to fall,
Speaker 3: and sometimes for hard transfers like getting out of a bathtub,
Speaker 3: they require assistance, like they need to grab onto a
Speaker 3: handlebar or something.
Speaker 1: When we consider the increasing demand for care of an
Speaker 1: aging population, you and your team are proposing robotics as
Speaker 1: a solution or at least an enhancement. And from what
Speaker 1: you've said, people want robotics, which I'm surprised by. I
Speaker 1: think I would have intuitively thought that older people would
Speaker 1: be anti robotic.
Speaker 2: I would have thought that too, But then I mean,
Speaker 2: here comes Ebar, this really amazing invention of yours that's
Speaker 2: meant to help older people in the ways that they
Speaker 2: want to be helped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So Ebar came about because we're looking
Speaker 3: around through the literature and through what devices are available,
Speaker 3: and we found that for robots that actually catch a fall,
Speaker 3: pretty much all of them you have to wear a
Speaker 3: harness or like some sort of wearable device. But like
Speaker 3: elderly people hate to do that. The feedback we got
Speaker 3: was that it makes them feel old and it's sometimes cumbersome. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So we're trying to develop a robot that can catch
Speaker 3: a fall without any like having to wear any sort
Speaker 3: of device. And then another thing we found is that
Speaker 3: a lot of elder care robut it's only a few
Speaker 3: that have looked at physical assistance. But typically you have
Speaker 3: to stand within what's called the base of support of
Speaker 3: the robot. So if you imagine all the points of
Speaker 3: the robot that touch the floor, if you like connect
Speaker 3: them with lines, as long as you stand within that area,
Speaker 3: the robot will never tip because you're within the base
Speaker 3: of support. But if you're outside, for some robots, they
Speaker 3: can tip over. So we're trying to design a robot
Speaker 3: that stable even if you're outside of that base of support,
Speaker 3: because then it can go like over bathtuble lips, it
Speaker 3: can go like onto a bed, it can go over
Speaker 3: like gaps and obstacles. So we put these two together
Speaker 3: and we developed what my professor calls like a mobile
Speaker 3: forklift or robotic candlebars.
Speaker 2: I think that that is so fascinating and such a
Speaker 2: leap forward in the technology for the folks that you
Speaker 2: know they're going to be listening. They can't see us.
Speaker 2: Hopefully they'll do their googles to be able to see ebar.
Speaker 2: Can you just describe what ebar looks like from top
Speaker 2: to box so that somebody can visualize it in their mind.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I'll try to do my best. It's this
Speaker 3: robot that can drive around. It can catch people with
Speaker 3: airbags when they fall. It can like physically lift them
Speaker 3: up with this sort of U shaped fork at the front,
Speaker 3: and then it has handlebars for them to grab onto.
Speaker 3: It's kind of just this big U that's padded with
Speaker 3: handlebars on the front and on the back. That's the
Speaker 3: part of the robot that you grab onto. You can
Speaker 3: rest your forearms on it, or you can just grab
Speaker 3: onto the handlebars on the side. And it has the
Speaker 3: airbags underneath which can grab onto your waist. So that
Speaker 3: U shaped fork is attached to a big linkage, and
Speaker 3: then that whole thing is attached to an omnidirectional drive base.
Speaker 3: And so the drive base, you know, like if you're
Speaker 3: trying to parallel parker car, you can't just like slide
Speaker 3: into a spot. You kind of have to move back
Speaker 3: and forth.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this robot has four wheels. Each wheel can independently
Speaker 3: rotate and translate, and so you can actually just go
Speaker 3: and then move sideways instantly, so it can move in
Speaker 3: any direction.
Speaker 1: That's great, That is amazing.
Speaker 3: I didn't put this in the paper, but I believe
Speaker 3: it's probably the world's fastest elder care robot. So we
Speaker 3: limit the power for safety, but it has a max
Speaker 3: speed of around twelve feet per second. It's very powerful,
Speaker 3: it's moved.
Speaker 2: I need one of those for my home.
Speaker 3: We limit it to like one to two feet per second.
Speaker 3: You know, they don't want to cause any injuries.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a great description of the design
Speaker 1: of how ebar looks. And I watched some of the
Speaker 1: footage that you all share it's on YouTube, and it
Speaker 1: looked like you had I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: PlayStation or Xbox style, like a joystick on there, a controller.
Speaker 1: Was that part of early testing? You know, what kind
Speaker 1: of control system does e bar have?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So right now, in the original paper, it's just
Speaker 3: manually controlled with a joystick, like similar to what you
Speaker 3: see with mobility scooters, where there's a joystick and people
Speaker 3: just sort of move it around. Currently, right now in
Speaker 3: the lab, we're working on automating some of the functionality.
Speaker 3: So we have a project where we're trying to use
Speaker 3: the drive base to track a person automatically so it
Speaker 3: can follow them around. And so you know, it's a
Speaker 3: lot of work to do that sort of automation, so
Speaker 3: we kind of just went for manual control first, but
Speaker 3: we're definitely looking into it.
Speaker 1: That's really cool.
Speaker 2: My background is also engineering, and so I also have
Speaker 2: a degree in mechanical engineering, and so I know that
Speaker 2: part of this is about footprint, because if you're thinking
Speaker 2: about the function of this robotis to help folks with
Speaker 2: getting around and to keep them safe, we know that
Speaker 2: it has to be able to take up as least
Speaker 2: amount of space as possible. Can you talk about the
Speaker 2: role that the robots footprint played in your design and
Speaker 2: how did you make sure that it could navigate in
Speaker 2: tight spaces inside of a home without tipping over or
Speaker 2: interfering with other things in the house or the user.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, for sure. So our goal was to
Speaker 3: make the robe but as small as possible. The problem
Speaker 3: is that you know, if it were just like six
Speaker 3: inches wide, it would tip over immediately. So what we
Speaker 3: did is. We set up a sort of an optimization problem,
Speaker 3: and from a high level we said, okay, like how
Speaker 3: small can we make the drive base and how heavy
Speaker 3: can we make it so that it doesn't fall through
Speaker 3: the floor. Because you know, if you think about a person,
Speaker 3: a person occupies about one square foot of space if
Speaker 3: they're standing up straight. He said, okay, you know the
Speaker 3: average person. A floor can support a person that weighs
Speaker 3: maybe two hundred three hundred pounds, no problem, So we'll
Speaker 3: try to limit the robot weight to that. Then we
Speaker 3: looked at like what are the maximum forces people can
Speaker 3: apply laterally and horizontally. So it turns out the US
Speaker 3: military has done a lot of studies like this in
Speaker 3: the eighties and they found that, like I think it's
Speaker 3: like one hundred and twenty Newton's horizontal force, they have
Speaker 3: like force from any orientation. So we can quantify this
Speaker 3: really well, like when you're standing up, how much can
Speaker 3: you push on the robot?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: So we put all that together and we have a
Speaker 3: cost function. With the cost function says, okay, how can
Speaker 3: I shrink the robot as much as possible while still
Speaker 3: satisfying the load bearing constraints? And so putting those all together,
Speaker 3: the actual wheels of the drive base occupy around a
Speaker 3: ten inch square and then we have two sort of
Speaker 3: outriggers like almost antennae, so we can get a little
Speaker 3: bit more stability. And so the footprint of the robot,
Speaker 3: I think it's around the base itself is around fifteen
Speaker 3: inches by fifteen inches, not including the outriggers. Wow, with
Speaker 3: the outriggers, it's a little bit bigger. I think they're
Speaker 3: around twenty inches wide. But your average doorways are somewhere
Speaker 3: between twenty eight to thirty six inches, so we still
Speaker 3: got plenty of space around the door.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: And you know, I know that this is designed for
Speaker 2: elderly folks that need help around the house, but I
Speaker 2: can already imagine this helping a lot of people who
Speaker 2: are differently abled from the disabled community. And did you
Speaker 2: consider that as you were designing? Is that something that
Speaker 2: also came into your mind as another use for ebar?
Speaker 3: Sort of, So we did think about using it for
Speaker 3: Parkinson's patients because they sometimes just have a struggle maintaining
Speaker 3: their balance, But I think absolutely it could be applied
Speaker 3: towards different populations all be honest, we specifically designed it
Speaker 3: for elderly persons, but I think you know, there are
Speaker 3: certainly other people who could benefit from the robot.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I think that's such a good point that TT's
Speaker 1: talked about before in engineering and design. We've talked about
Speaker 1: it in just inclusivity across the board in anything that
Speaker 1: you create. You know, the more you think about who
Speaker 1: this can help, the more people benefit from it, even
Speaker 1: people you didn't consider. I want to know about how
Speaker 1: you're these different types of assistance that ebar provides, because
Speaker 1: it's not just that you have to fall in. Because
Speaker 1: of the shape of it and because of how you
Speaker 1: designed it, it seems like it can do more than
Speaker 1: just like wait until you're at the ground and needing
Speaker 1: to be lifted, right, like ebar can come in ahead
Speaker 1: of time. Yeah, I'd love to hear you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the different falls you anticipate it,
Speaker 1: or the different types of knees you anticipated, and how
Speaker 1: you build all those things together into this system.
Speaker 3: Yeah. For sure. Our goal was to catch a person
Speaker 3: before they fell, because when they're on the ground, oftentimes
Speaker 3: they may be unconscious, they may have passed out, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of a bad situation to be and if
Speaker 3: the person's already on the ground, right, So you're thinking
Speaker 3: of how to do it, and we came up with
Speaker 3: the idea of using airbags because they're soft, you can
Speaker 3: have like a large contact area. And the question is,
Speaker 3: like is it physically possible. So a previous student in
Speaker 3: my lab has worked on like fall prediction and she
Speaker 3: found that you can predict a fall up to two
Speaker 3: hundred fifty milliseconds before the person actually starts to fall down. Wow,
Speaker 3: And that's why using like a waste mounted sensor called
Speaker 3: an im you. So we said, okay, two fifty milliseconds,
Speaker 3: that's our target inflation time. Can we like fully inflate
Speaker 3: the airbags and catch a person right before they so then, yeah,
Speaker 3: we tried different shapes and sizes and configurations of airbags.
Speaker 3: I tested a lot on myself, you see, like how
Speaker 3: how much can I inflate them before it becomes painful?
Speaker 3: And then we looked at studies of like skin bruising
Speaker 3: because you know, we know that elderly people's skin are
Speaker 3: kind of sensitive, so we didn't want to cause them
Speaker 3: any danger or put them in risk of bruising their skin.
Speaker 3: And we settled with a configuration of four airbacks. There's
Speaker 3: two big ones on the side and then two smaller
Speaker 3: ones on the front like columns, so when they inflate,
Speaker 3: they sort of push the person back into the robot.
Speaker 3: And then we developed a rapid like two stage inflation
Speaker 3: system that can inflate them within two hundred and fifty milliseconds,
Speaker 3: so if you're walking, you know, right now. Again, it's
Speaker 3: all done manually, but we have done work in our
Speaker 3: lab about like detecting falls, just haven't implemented it on
Speaker 3: the robot yet. The idea is, if you begin to fall,
Speaker 3: the airbags which just rapidly inflate and gravy and sort
Speaker 3: of hold on to you, and so you're kind of
Speaker 3: frozen in this position, but you have a chance to
Speaker 3: regain your balance, or we can deflate the airbags and
Speaker 3: you can continue normally, or we can just hold you,
Speaker 3: you know, until someone can come to help.
Speaker 2: And so the next part of the engineering is to
Speaker 2: you know, test it out on the users. I'm wondering,
Speaker 2: you know, one, I think it'll be interesting to hear
Speaker 2: like how you get volunteers for this or who you
Speaker 2: recruit to test these things out, and then also what
Speaker 2: their feedback was and how that informs like how you
Speaker 2: move forward and any changes that you might make.
Speaker 3: The major thing we have to make sure before we
Speaker 3: can roll actual elderly persons that it's completely safe because
Speaker 3: we don't want to cause anyone any injury. So right
Speaker 3: now we've been testing in healthy volunteers. By healthy volunteers,
Speaker 3: I mean myself and a couple of my web mates. Okay,
Speaker 3: but yeah, the idea is to refine the system to
Speaker 3: make sure it's safe, to you know, sort of measure
Speaker 3: the forces which we have been and so far everything's good.
Speaker 3: Then we can apply for approval from our university and
Speaker 3: then start enrolding elderly persons.
Speaker 1: Okay, this sounds really cool because you've called EBAR a
Speaker 1: step towards aging in place. And I am thinking back
Speaker 1: to those commercials where people were like life alert and
Speaker 1: they were waiting until they already fail. And like you said,
Speaker 1: after you've once you hit the ground, anything could happen.
Speaker 1: You could be unconscious. But like I think about what
Speaker 1: this could mean. Something you mentioned is how maybe stressed
Speaker 1: our healthcare system is for aging adults. Yes, we're talking
Speaker 1: about this in the home, but could you imagine this
Speaker 1: type of tech in other places like care facilities or
Speaker 1: as part of public programs. How do you imagine this tech?
Speaker 1: You know, I know we're looking much further ahead, but
Speaker 1: how do you imagine it scaling?
Speaker 3: I think for me personally, i'd say, like, I think
Speaker 3: the gold standard is a human being. It's very difficult
Speaker 3: for robot to replace a human, right. I think We've
Speaker 3: seen this again and again. But the reality is that
Speaker 3: if there is a care shortage, I think it's better
Speaker 3: to like augment the shortage with robots than just to
Speaker 3: not be able to do anything about it. So one
Speaker 3: thing we were thinking is like in nursing homes, ebar
Speaker 3: could sort of handle some of the easier tasks. If
Speaker 3: a person just needs to walk, for example, to a sink,
Speaker 3: then ebar could help them out. But very complex tasks
Speaker 3: like lifting a person into a bathtub with a sling
Speaker 3: like those can still be done by the caretakers, so
Speaker 3: it can sort of free them up. That instead of
Speaker 3: elderly persons having to wait a long time for care
Speaker 3: that if for some tasks we could send the robot
Speaker 3: and for some tasks we could send a human caretaker.
Speaker 2: I love that because Menzakia talk about this all the
Speaker 2: time where a lot of solutions to the world's problems
Speaker 2: is not an or response like this or that. It's
Speaker 2: an and so not to say, oh, Ebar is going
Speaker 2: to replace all caregivers, there won't be a need for
Speaker 2: a human. It's like, no, you can have the human
Speaker 2: and you can have e bar, which to supplement and
Speaker 2: it makes it an even better experience. I'm curious about,
Speaker 2: you know, what are the next steps with ebar. Are
Speaker 2: there any like upgrades or advancements that you want to
Speaker 2: add to EBAR, or what's the vision or are there
Speaker 2: things that you want to do outside of e bar
Speaker 2: to also help supplement EBAR.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. Honestly, it's discussion my advisor
Speaker 3: had with me almost immediately after I submitted the paper. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think certainly there's room for making the robots smaller
Speaker 3: and more compact. I've talked with a lot of people,
Speaker 3: even my parents are saying like, hey, you should add
Speaker 3: something that can pick up a person's phone if it
Speaker 3: falls down, like a sort of a coup holder on
Speaker 3: the robot. I said, well, that's great. I'd love to
Speaker 3: do that, but I don't know if I can really
Speaker 3: put that in my thesis work. So one of the
Speaker 3: other things our lab is looked into is handlebar optimization.
Speaker 3: Like if you think about it, when you go into
Speaker 3: restrooms or some public places, you see handlebars on the walls.
Speaker 3: It turns out there's not really been a lot of
Speaker 3: work that's been done on like is this the biomechanically
Speaker 3: optimal location for handlebar? And because like you know, who knows,
Speaker 3: it could be in front of you, it could be
Speaker 3: like up here, it could be like down there. So
Speaker 3: we were trying to look into, like can we make
Speaker 3: a model of a person and then predict like where
Speaker 3: is the optimal place for handlebar it maybe reduces the
Speaker 3: muscle strength the most or provides the most support. So
Speaker 3: that sort of stuff I think is interesting and I
Speaker 3: think could compliment a robot like e bar because then
Speaker 3: it helps us nowhere to position the U shaped fork
Speaker 3: based on the posture of the person. So yeah, that's
Speaker 3: I guess that sort of work that we've been looking
Speaker 3: to and thinking about pursuing in the future.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think this is so cool.
Speaker 3: Things.
Speaker 1: You know, this is totally outside my comfort zone of science.
Speaker 1: TT understands this kind of stuff way better than me,
Speaker 1: which is why she has such great questions, is there
Speaker 1: anything else here seeing in the field of robotics and
Speaker 1: elder care? Is there anything else you're excited about this
Speaker 1: in the research pipeline, even if it's not in your lab,
Speaker 1: like with other labs that do great work that you see, Ye,
Speaker 1: that feels promising.
Speaker 3: So we are collaborating with So just full disclosure. But
Speaker 3: at Stanford, Alison O Kumurro, she did a lot of
Speaker 3: work on these things called vine robots. They're sort of
Speaker 3: like flexible tubes. They can inflate and they can go
Speaker 3: under a person. And so we have this idea. It's like,
Speaker 3: wait a second, you have an elderly person lying in
Speaker 3: bed and you want to like put them in a sling,
Speaker 3: Like right now, you've got to lift them up and
Speaker 3: pull a slip. What if the sling just like inflated
Speaker 3: under them, like and then you could just pick them
Speaker 3: up that way. So that work I think we've been
Speaker 3: doing with her. But she was the one who's been
Speaker 3: working on vine robots. I think that's really cool. In
Speaker 3: terms of other labs and other research, we see a
Speaker 3: lot of work with humanoids. Humanoid robot seems to be
Speaker 3: like the next big thing. There's a bunch of companies
Speaker 3: pursuing humanoids, and so people have started looking into like
Speaker 3: using a humanoid for sit to stand assistance, which I
Speaker 3: think is pretty cool. My concern with it is just,
Speaker 3: especially if the robot has two feet, it's not going
Speaker 3: to be a stable as something that has like a heavy,
Speaker 3: big drive base. You know, like if the robot and
Speaker 3: the person fall down, then that's really bad. But I
Speaker 3: think it's great work though. I think that that should
Speaker 3: be explored. And I saw a couple of papers when
Speaker 3: I was at akra Acra is a big robotics conference
Speaker 3: that happens each year. It's sort of like v big
Speaker 3: robotics conference, and so I saw a couple of papers
Speaker 3: where people are looking at using humanoids to like provide
Speaker 3: sit to stand assistance, and I thought that was really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day because
Speaker 2: I've also been noticing a lot of the humanoid innovation
Speaker 2: and how it's like, you know, as engineers, we try
Speaker 2: and create things that are not just flashy but useful,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't really seem intuitive to me to say,
Speaker 2: this human is not able to form this task, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to replace it with another human but I
Speaker 2: think people are just so enamored by humanoids.
Speaker 1: I'm not. As a non engineering person, I feel like,
Speaker 1: give me the e bar. If I knew I was
Speaker 1: falling back into a face, I don't think I would
Speaker 1: like this, you know, And so I think it's interesting,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that humanoid component is what makes
Speaker 1: people feel like, oh, you're trying to replace me, or
Speaker 1: oh that's my own bias that I think. If it's
Speaker 1: hard already for a person to help you, why would
Speaker 1: I put it in something else that's person shaped to
Speaker 1: do the same work so it can be just as
Speaker 1: hard for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, make that inflatable sling, Like, I love that idea.
Speaker 1: I think it's great.
Speaker 2: My last question is just about the process, because we
Speaker 2: just did an episode on the research funding cuts and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. I really would love for you to
Speaker 2: highlight like what it takes one to get to this
Speaker 2: point with EBAR and then to have EBAR kind of
Speaker 2: like break into the healthcare system, if you know, because
Speaker 2: I think that one thing that the Kia said is
Speaker 2: that folks they don't think about research in the way
Speaker 2: that they should. They think about innovation. So when the
Speaker 2: product is there and in their hand, they're like, ah, research,
Speaker 2: and it's like, no, that's innovation. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: research that gets you to that point. So can you
Speaker 2: talk about that process for yourself. I think it would
Speaker 2: be great for people to here to understand what it
Speaker 2: takes to do something like this.
Speaker 3: I took product design. It was a class at MIT
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago. They presented us with this process.
Speaker 3: I think it's just called like a need driven develop
Speaker 3: and process. But the idea is you start first with
Speaker 3: the stakeholders. You go to the elderly person, you ask
Speaker 3: them like what sort of tasks are you trying to do?
Speaker 3: And then oftentimes what you find is people will tell
Speaker 3: you things, but really there's like underlying needs they're called
Speaker 3: latent needs that they're not really telling you. They can't
Speaker 3: really put into words well, but it becomes obvious as
Speaker 3: you look into more of the of what they're doing. Like,
Speaker 3: for example, an elderly person might say like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: I really have trouble getting into and out of the bathtub,
Speaker 3: but I want is just like like a cane or
Speaker 3: something that'll help me get in and out. And you're like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe the problem is that the tub is too high.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's the problem that, like, you just need a
Speaker 3: little bit of support, and so it may not be
Speaker 3: a cane that you want. It may be like a
Speaker 3: robot or a handlebar or some other device that can
Speaker 3: also help you. So we start with this stakeholders and
Speaker 3: looking at the latent needs and then in our case,
Speaker 3: we develop this sign concept for robot and we went
Speaker 3: to a physical therapist that's Spaulding Rehabilitatian Hospital. We did
Speaker 3: a presentation and they said, oh, we like these aspects
Speaker 3: of it, but we think these aspects wouldn't work with
Speaker 3: the patients that we work with. So then we sort
Speaker 3: of go back and forth a couple of times, rEFInd
Speaker 3: the design, and then from there on it's the most
Speaker 3: fun part for me. I get to build a prototype.
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting because that's such a long process
Speaker 1: and the only research you're highlighting is the new research
Speaker 1: that you're doing. But you've already told us that even
Speaker 1: in your prototype, to determine how much force a person
Speaker 1: might use, you're going back to research from forty years
Speaker 1: ago to the nineteen eighties, right, and so research that
Speaker 1: some people may say, why does the army need to
Speaker 1: do this, or why does the military need to figure
Speaker 1: out how much force a person exerts laterally, because in
Speaker 1: forty years, a graduate student is going to be figuring
Speaker 1: out how to design a robot that can keep your
Speaker 1: grandmother from falling when she reaches for something. And I
Speaker 1: just think those are the connections between research and innovation
Speaker 1: that we don't highlight enough. You're relying on research that
Speaker 1: has already been done to help you iterate and innovate
Speaker 1: really quickly to decide what the drive based size should be.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just such a good demonstration of
Speaker 1: research and innovation how closely those two rely on each other.
Speaker 3: For sure, for sure, And there are so many times when, like, like,
Speaker 3: one of the critical things that we've needed was you
Speaker 3: needed to know the friction between a person's skin and
Speaker 3: their clothes. There's a sony in twenty thirteen that characterizes
Speaker 3: so thank you so much. You know, it's such an
Speaker 3: obscure piece of knowledge. You think, like, when would you
Speaker 3: ever need that? But it turns out we need to know, like, well,
Speaker 3: the closes slip on the skin if we can press
Speaker 3: them with airbags. So this random research study ended up
Speaker 3: being extremely useful because we can quantify now the friction.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's a ton of these connections between prior research,
Speaker 3: some of it not even remotely related to elder care.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's like we're standing on the show
Speaker 3: of giants. Yes, all this knowledge gets built up, and
Speaker 3: you may not think it's useful in the moment, but
Speaker 3: then twenty years down the road someone needs it. It's
Speaker 3: like the exact thing that they need exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's another thing that we always say is that
Speaker 2: science never stops. And that is a really good illustration
Speaker 2: of that, where you know, just because that part of
Speaker 2: research ended or that paper was published, doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: it'll never be used again. It doesn't mean that it
Speaker 2: won't be useful. It doesn't mean that you can't build
Speaker 2: off of that. And so like science never never stops,
Speaker 2: someone will be citing your paper one hundred years from now,
Speaker 2: I'm sure and saying, wow, look what we were able
Speaker 2: to do based on what Roberto and his lab group
Speaker 2: were able to do, and now we can innovate off
Speaker 2: of that. The science never stops, and the work that
Speaker 2: we do is really important, even if it feels obscure.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think about my graduate, my dissertation work, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, oh god, no one needs this. It
Speaker 2: was in nano materials. And then I'll go and look
Speaker 2: at some of my old papers. I'm like, wow, cited
Speaker 2: eighty times. Okay, that's not bad, that's excellent.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, it's cool to see you. Everything fits together,
Speaker 3: and honestly, I think we're going to see more and
Speaker 3: more on that.
Speaker 2: Congratulations on all of your success. We will be tapping
Speaker 2: into mix to see how Ebar is evolving and your
Speaker 2: success as your career continues to grow and change. You're
Speaker 2: doing a great job and doing a lot of really
Speaker 2: important work. So congratulations, Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: I'm honestly, I'm just so grateful to have the opportunity,
Speaker 3: you know, to be a graduate student and to study
Speaker 3: all of this. I'm you know, I'm always very grateful
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 1: So amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope
Speaker 2: Labs podcast.
Speaker 1: He is on X and Instagram at d R Underscore
Speaker 1: t Sho.
Speaker 2: And you can find Zakiya at z said So.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Speaker 2: Our senior supervising producer is Kristin Lapour. And Our Associate
Speaker 2: producer is Issara Savez.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is sound design, edited and mixed by James Barber.
Speaker 1: Lamanada Media's Vice President of Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger.
Speaker 1: Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Katrina Norvil. Marketing lead
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Speaker 2: Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
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