Engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have discovered a new method of programming robots to help dementia patients find drugs, glasses, phones, and other items they need but don't know where to put them. The initial focus of research was to help specific populations, but one day, anyone can use this technology to find what they have misplaced. The research paper was published at the recent ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Computer Interaction in 2023. Dementia is a disease that limits brain function and can lead to confusion, memory loss, and disability. Many of these patients repeatedly forget the location of daily items, which reduces their quality of life and puts an additional burden on nursing staff. Engineers believe that in this situation, companion robots with situational memory may change this situation. They successfully utilized artificial intelligence to create a new type of 'artificial memory'. The research team first started with a mobile robot called Fetch, which has a camera to perceive the world around it; Then, researchers used object detection algorithms to program the robot to detect, track, and save specific object memory logs in its camera view through stored videos. Due to the ability of robots to distinguish different objects, they can record the time and location of objects entering or leaving their field of view. The researchers subsequently developed a graphical interface that allows users to select the objects they want to track, enter object names, search for them on smartphone applications or computers, and the robot can point out the time and location of the last time it observed a specific object. Tests have shown that the system is very accurate. (New News Agency)