Research Seminars Archive 2004-2005 - Pascal Poupart, Assistant Professor, School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo - March 9, 2005 Abstract It is estimated that 1 in 3 people over the age of 85 has dementia (deterioration of intellectual faculties), with Alzheimer disease accounting for 60-70% of cases. At the onset of dementia, a family member will often assume the role of caregiver. Unfortunately, as dementia worsens, the caregiver will experience greater feelings of burden, which frequently results in the care recipient being placed in a long term care facility. A solution to relieve some of the financial and physical burden placed upon caregivers and health care facilities is a ubiquitous, autonomous system that will allow aging in place by improving the quality of life for both the care recipient and their caregiver. People with advanced dementia may have difficulty completing even simple activities of daily living (ADL) and require assistance from a caregiver to guide them through the steps needed to complete an activity. Examples of ADL are handwashing, dressing, and toileting. In this talk, I will describe a system that guides patients with memory deficiencies through the steps of handwashing by monitoring their progress with a video-camera and when necessary, prompting the next step with a verbal cue. The talk will focus on how to design effective prompting strategies that take into account the uncertainty due to the inherent noise of the video sequence as well as the fact that patients do not always follow the prompts. More specifically, I will explain how to model robust prompting strategies with partially observable Markov decision processes. This is work done in collaboration with Geoff Fernie, Alex Mihailidis, Jennifer Boger, Craig Boutilier and Jesse Hoey at the University of Toronto. Biosketch Pascal Poupart is an Assistant Professor in University of Waterloo's School of Computer Science. Pascal did his doctoral work in Computer Science at the University of Toronto. He joined the University of Waterloo August 2004. His research focuses on the development of intelligent and adaptive systems for a wide range of applications including assistive technologies for elder care, spoken-dialog systems and user preference elicitation. ref. (slides available from) www.nihi.ca/index.php?MenuItemID=105

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