And meet its inventor Takanori Shibata who will demonstrate PARO and speak about the innovative field of robot therapy at a public lecture presented by the College of Rehabilitation Sciences, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.

Who: Takanori Shibata, PhD, Senior Research Scientist at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
What: Demonstration and Presentation on “PARO: Neurological Therapeutic Medical Robot.”
When: Thursday, March 30, 12 – 1PM
Where: Theatre C, Basic Medical Sciences Building, Bannatyne Campus
The presentation will be streamed live here.

Robot therapy uses robots as a substitute for animals in animal therapy and is applied in the fields of patient care and welfare. Interestingly, the inspiration for PARO came from a baby harp seal Shibata encountered off the coast of Quebec’s Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

“PARO can be used by children to the elderly, who have dementia, cancer, developmental problems and brain injuries,” Shibata says. “Interaction with PARO improves mood, depression, loneliness and improves communication and sociability. In the case of the elderly with dementia, because of these effects, it will reduce aggression and wandering as well as reducing the burden of care.”

Clinical trials with dementia patients, for example, have found that PARO improved symptoms such as depression, anxiety and stress. The need for symptom-related medications was also reduced for these patients.

PARO can also  be used in other kinds of therapy similar to real animals, such as palliative care for cancer patients and building social skills in children and adolescents with developmental problems.

First commercialized in Japan in 2005, PARO was certified as a ‘neurological therapeutic medical device’ by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2009. There are now 5,000 PAROS being used in hospitals and care facilities in over 30 countries around the world.

In July 2015 researchers from the University of Manitoba partnered with a team from Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT) in Tehran, Iran to create a robot soccer team that competed in RoboCup. With more than 2000 participants from around the world, RoboCup is the largest and most prestigious competition for intelligent soccer robots. This year’s competition took place in Heifei, China from July 13 to 23.

The AUT-UofM team competed in the Humanoid League Teen Size competition (two players, max 1.4 metres high), and won an impressive third place in the soccer competition. The team lost their semi-final match to Team Parand from Iran, the new world champion.

“The Iranian team focused on the hardware and the U of M team focused on the software,” said John Anderson, head of the department of computer science. “Collaboration with a team with a very different cultural background proved both challenging, but also interesting for all involved.”

The team also achieved an excellent second place in the technical challenge competition behind team NTUST Teen from NTUST, Taiwan. The technical challenge is an event to challenge particular player skills, similar to a combine in human soccer, football or hockey. This year the technical challenge involved push recovery (a robot being able to remain on its feet after being pushed), goal kicks from a moving ball, high kicks and high jumps.

“Participating in the Teen size league is more difficult in our experience than using a team with smaller robots, as the larger robots are more challenging to control and power, and physically transporting the robots also becomes an issue,” said Anderson.

The U of M side of the team consisted of the following researchers and students: Amirhossein Hosseinmemar, Chris Iverach-Brereton, Brittany Postnikoff, Dewin White, Jamillo Santos, Kiral Poon, John Anderson and Jacky Baltes. Santos, Poon and Baltes represented the U of M side of the team in Heifei for the tournament. Funding for team travel comes in part from the Faculty of Science and the Department of Computer Science, to which the team is very grateful.