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IIT Kharagpur students develop AI App for elderly care

Kolkata, July 22

Aiming to lend support to geriatric care by aiding caregivers to reach out to the aged on time, students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur have developed two interconnected android smartphone applications, an official said on Monday.

The app named 'CARE4U', developed by an interdisciplinry team of 2nd year B.Tech students, connects the caregiver to the elderly. While one of these apps can be installed on the phones of the elderly, the other can be attached to the smartphone of the caregiver.

"The neural network-based fall detection algorithm in the app installed on the phone of the elderly can detect whether the elderly has fallen down. If there is a fall, it automatically calls the caregiver and emergency services with the location of the elderly person," a statement said.

The other features include detecting emotion by taking a picture and calculating the mood index. To make this feature more effective the team has developed a cognitive intelligent chatbot for the elderly person to engage with.

"We customized it to recognize the current mood of the person and, accordingly, fine-tune its conversations with that of the person. For example, the chatbot can recommend a motivational quote or an old song when the person is sad," said team member Kanishka Haldar from the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering.

Moreover, the app can also do other activities like make a call, send a text, book a cab and so on. It also has a record of medical histories, an account of allergies, an SOS button, real-time location tracking, among others.

The 'CARE4U' app includes a 'Medicine Reminder' feature to remind both the elderly person as well as the caregiver that it is time for the former to take medicine. 

The app recently won the IIT Kharagpur team the first runners-up position at a nationwide hackathon called vesAIthon'19.