The Companion Chatbot for Dementia Patients

Abstract

Health is a pragmatic state of wellbeing which fosters the coordinated development of physical and mental capabilities leading to the enjoyment of prosperous and complete life. Dementia is a procured retrogression in cognitive ability that impairs the successful performance of activities of daily living. Memory is the major ability of a human being, which is lost with Dementia. Alzheimer’s is major cause for a Dementia. Alzheimer’s is a chronic neurodegenerative disease, the cause of which is poorly understood. Mostly it is believed to be inherited from parents, hypertension, depression and head injuries. Since there is no known treatment management consists largely of providing a familiar environment for the patient and support for the care givers. In order to assist the patients, to manage their daily living by themselves without the guidance from the care takers, this companion chatbot has been designed. This companion chatbot has been specially designed for patients suffering from dementia which includes prominent features like, i) geo-fence, which automatically triggers the message to the family member registered in the application whenever the patient goes out of the boundary. The message received by the family member consists of the link which points the patient’s exact location based on the latitudes and longitudes. ii) Location detection, which helps the patient to get back to his location with the help of a dynamic marker which points towards the patient’s home location. iii) Voice to text conversion, this particular feature helps the patient to recognize his near and dear ones. iv) Face recognition, this is an additional backup feature useful when the application fails to recognize the speech due to external noise, cracked voice etc. This feature is further divided into three other categories like face training, face recognition and a gallery which stores all trained faces. v) Memory bank, it acts as a repository which stores images, links etc. which can help the patient to recall the past. vi) Remainder, this feature constantly reminds the patient about the disorder. Hence by assisting the patients through this application, patient’s life expectancy can be prolonged and also this application helps them to lead a social life without the help of a caretaker.

Keywords: Health,Dementia, OpenCV, Alzheimer’sNeurodegenerative, Chabot, android application, API, geo-fence, Location detection, Voice to text conversion, Memory bank, Reminder.