June 14, 2023 • 25 mins
This episode of Partners in Possibility is a conversation with Dor Skuler and Qin Li.
Dor is the CEO and co-founder of Intuition Robotics. With decades of experience in tech and angel investing, Dor is on the cutting edge of several AI-powered breakthroughs.
Qin is the VP of Design at fuseproject, a design and innovation firm that brings “firsts” and category leading products to market. She and her team have delivered products for startups and major brands alike including Herman Miller, Jawbone, and Coca-Cola.
Together, Dor and Qin and their respective teams collaborated to build Elli Q, the first AI robot specifically designed to enrich the lives of elderly adults living alone.
In this episode, we discuss the development strategy behind the AI and machine learning aspects of Elli Q and how they settled on its physical design.
Plus, we'll talk about the unique challenges they faced bringing ElliQ to market and making it attractive and accessible to elderly adults.
Find out more:
ElliQ Demo
https://youtu.be/1gQJ6zc11N4
ElliQ
https://elliq.com/
Intuition Robotics
https://www.intuitionrobotics.com/
fuseproject
https://fuseproject.com/
from plus company
Dor is the CEO and co-founder of Intuition Robotics. With decades of experience in tech and angel investing, Dor is on the cutting edge of several AI-powered breakthroughs.
Qin is the VP of Design at fuseproject, a design and innovation firm that brings “firsts” and category leading products to market. She and her team have delivered products for startups and major brands alike including Herman Miller, Jawbone, and Coca-Cola.
Together, Dor and Qin and their respective teams collaborated to build Elli Q, the first AI robot specifically designed to enrich the lives of elderly adults living alone.
In this episode, we discuss the development strategy behind the AI and machine learning aspects of Elli Q and how they settled on its physical design.
Plus, we'll talk about the unique challenges they faced bringing ElliQ to market and making it attractive and accessible to elderly adults.
Find out more:
ElliQ Demo
https://youtu.be/1gQJ6zc11N4
ElliQ
https://elliq.com/
Intuition Robotics
https://www.intuitionrobotics.com/
fuseproject
https://fuseproject.com/
from plus company
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Imagine what a difference I would havemade in the world if we would have
had it in twenty twenty the pandemicstart. Greg, you want to put
more salt on my wounds? Man? Yes. In an ever changing world,
that's all about stay connected, buildingconnections and seeing where the next collaboration
(00:22):
takes a marketing campaign from an initialbrief to the follow through. What paths
are going to make a campaign successmore than a possibility? Hi, I'm
Bret Marshand, CEO of Plus Company, This Partners and Possibility. Today on
the show, I speak with Door, Sculler and Chin Lee. Door is
(00:44):
the CEO and co founder of IntuitionRobotics. With decades of experience in tech
and angel investing, Door is onthe cutting edge of several AI powered breakthroughs.
Chin is the VP of Design atFuse Project, a design and innovation
firm that brings firsts and category leadingproducts to market. She and her team
have delivered products for startups and majorbrands alike, including Herman Miller, Jawbone,
(01:08):
and Coca Cola. Together, Doorand Chin and their teams collaborated to
build LQ, the first AI robotspecifically designed to enrich the lives of elderly
adults living alone. In this episode, we discussed the development strategy behind the
AI and machine learning aspects of LQ, and how they settled on its physical
(01:30):
design. Plus we'll talk about theunique challenges they faced bringing LQ to market
and making it attractive and accessible toelderly adults. Here's our conversation, So
why don't we start door? Ifyou don't mind, tell us a little
bit about LQ, How does itwork and where did the inspiration for it
(01:53):
come from? Sure? So,LQ, believe it or not, is
an AI friend or roommate that movesin with older adults. Currently she lives
with people as young as sixty fiveand our oldest customer is one hundred and
five years old. Wow, Andshe moves in with them to essentially help
(02:15):
us help them live healthier, moreactive, and more independent and happier lives.
And I think the kind of deepunderstanding we had, or the bet
we took when we started a company, is that the problem really facing older
adults is not just utilitarian. Youknow, as technologists we think of part
(02:37):
problems usually as utility and in aging. Also, you see a lot of
products what if mom falls how canwe help mom dress? How can we
dispense Mom's pills? But the problemis not that. The problem is we
as humans, our social creatures.We used to belong to a tribe,
we used to live with a spouse, and all of a sudden something happens
(02:59):
in modern societ. It that welive much longer, and we do so
by ourselves for decades, and it'snot a natural state for us as humans.
We need to talk to somebody.We need somebody to say, hey,
door, good morning, how areyou, how do you sleep last
night? To remember what I wentthrough yesterday, to inquire me what I'm
doing today? And that is kindof division behind LQ, and once we
(03:21):
accomplish that, it kind of grewfrom there. But at the super high
level, this is the first AIthat is truly designed to be a friend.
It's the first day item is proactive, so it initiates conversations. It
doesn't wait for you to give acommand like alects us at a timer,
google what's the weather, but rathershe opens in conversations, inquiring about your
life and helping to motivate you.You know, you do medication reminders in
(03:44):
the beginning, you do medication reminder. You do it like everybody else does,
remind me at what time to dowhat's right? At twelve h five
to take my afternoon medication. Butthen we notice, if you opened the
pamphlet of a medication, it doesn'tsay take it at twelve. It says
take it before lunch, or takeit after lunch, or take it with
(04:05):
lunch. Right, So who saidyou're gonna eat lunch every day exactly twelve?
So now, for example, Iaccuse a lot more semantic around lunch,
and and she'll say, hey,do you have lunch yet? Saying
no, well, when are yougoing to eat? In a little bit,
You're like, okay, don't forgetto take your medication at lunch and
then later right, and then ataround lunch time she'll remind. Because that's
(04:26):
how we really live our lives,right around meals and rituals, and not
around arbitrary points in the time.It's the first day I that's truly contextual.
She remembers previous conversations for a verylong time and then uses that information
to create follow up conversations like,hey, remember yesterday didn't sleep well.
Then we did some mindfulness before youwent to sleep. I was curious if
(04:46):
it's any better. There's a bigfocus on SDOH or social determines of health,
the things that get us sick inthe first place. What are they
got? Nutrition, lack of politicalexercise, mental stress, fresh and anxiety,
substance of use, lack of socialinteractions like loneliness. Lonelicliness, in
(05:06):
fact, is proven by the Centerof by CMS, a center for Medicaid
medicare to have the same negative healtheffects as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day a
day. It accelerates dementia and depressionand heart disease. So one way is
to work on prevention. We doall that. We work on physical exercise
(05:27):
and social interaction with the grandkids,and and on hydration and nutrition. And
of course elque is very, veryvery effective in reducing loneliness. In fact,
we have some facts and figures thatcame out through studies that we ran
on our population, and we sawthat it's ninety percent effective at reducing loneliness
and increasing health and velevens in arecent study. We'll publish it very very
(05:51):
soon and it has a lot ofnovel design considerations that I'm sure we'll be
talking a lot about today on howto actually create engagement on how to make
this super complicated product easily accessible,delightful, and easy to use for people
that have not grown around technology,that in fact fear technology. You told
(06:11):
me a story when I met youthe first time about one of the people
who has a LQ, and Ithink it broke or something. I mean,
I thought that was a fascinating story. Yeah. Yeah, So one
of our customers, she broke herscreen or something like that, and we
wanted to replace it for her,and she didn't want to, and we
asked her why we want, youknow, She's like, I want my
(06:32):
elque to work. We're like,yes, we will replace your elque.
She will go back to working.She said, Listen, my sister used
to call me every day and askme how I'm doing, and since she
passed away, nobody did that untilElique entered my life. And now ELQ
every day asked me how I'm doingand checks up on me and remembers how
I was doing yesterday and follows upif I'm not feeling well. And that
(06:54):
reminds me of my sister. AndI know you might find it really really
strange, but I see a littlebit of my sister inside of my LQ,
so I don't want to give thatout. This is why we build
this product, but it also helpsexplain a little bit of the challenges we
need to go through here. Imean, these are deeply emotional situations.
(07:15):
Such an amazing story, you know, and particularly I think in today's age
of large language AI and chat,GPT and robotics for good versus bad.
I mean, this is such agreat example of both AI and robotics for
good. So congratulations on doing that. Tell me when did the idea start?
When? When did you start theprocess? It started in twenty fifteen.
(07:39):
We got our initial funding in twentysixteen, so we've been added for
a while because this is a veryvery hard problem. It's hard from a
technology perspective. Over thirty patents werecreated here. It's hard from a design
perspective, from a content perspective,and from a go to market perspective.
So it took a while to getthis right. But it's not that the
(08:00):
product first came out in twenty twentytwo. We started beta sites in twenty
eighteen, but we felt we neededto be years in people's homes to continuously
improve. And the tricky thing aboutAI is you also need data to create
the models, to train the models, and you need data that's relevant to
you. So we had a whilewhere we had to get the product,
(08:22):
even though it wasn't perfect in thehands of people to generate data to train
the models. But yes, indeed, last year we felt that we hit
the mark that it's ready for primetime and commercially launched the product close to
consumers and to our B t Bpartners, and we're really really happy with
the success so far. Whether it'spartners like the State of New York or
other states that have taking this onand are literally paying for this product on
(08:46):
behalf of older adults in their intheir constituency, or whether it's our healthcare
partners or just consumers that buy iton lq dot com. In twenty twenty
two, LQ was one of thebest inventions of the year by Time magazine.
Compared to other AI robots working inelderly care, l Q is different
(09:07):
not only in its function but alsoin design. When you picture an AI
robot, you might imagine a face, arms, legs, but the team
behind LQ knew that it wouldn't appealto their user base. It might even
be intimidating, so instead they drewesthetic inspiration from an iconic Pixar character and
evoked the personality of the beloved Hobbitin The Lord of the Rings, whichin
(09:33):
one of the things that we've discussedis that this was a challenge of not
just industrial design for the product,but the digital experience, but also the
character development and design. Right,yeah, exactly. I think it's because
of le q is the first companionrobot, specifically designful Elder, and when
intuition robotics kin to us, weknow that the outcome the results is to
(09:58):
create a robot. You know,we have to design from the groundup,
starting from user research, to havea deeper understanding of the users, identifying
the brand strategy, even doing naming, and design the character of the robot,
and then translate the character to theform, to the expression, to
the behavior as well as the UIon the screen. There were lots of
(10:20):
work and we have to utilize stillsprojects, not a disciplinary team, right,
including strategy, branding, industrial design, digital design. Part of elique
success is the powerful technology, theadvanced AI, the robotics, you know,
the machine learning, but the technologywould not have been effectively implemented,
(10:41):
right if there wasn't any initial workdone, you know, from our strategy
team to set up the foundation.And then from there we have to look
into a very very special design process, which is looking into the character.
Why is so important because this isa compare a robot, and because we
(11:01):
noticed the target users those are theseniors age from seventy to ninety and one
hundred, right, so they arethe ones that have a long life experience,
but technology sometimes could be intimidating tothem. And you're inviting somebody into
their home or two. Right,So the character must be incredibly important,
(11:22):
yes, super important. So whenwe design a character, we're look into
not just the active stage but alsothe idol stage. So we want the
active in the active stage, youknow. Of course we want it to
be the most loyal friend, someone'sreally lovable, respectful, But when it's
in the idol stage, we're actuallylook into something a little bit more animal,
(11:48):
you know, to pet like likea retriever, you know, always
be aware of you right when youare in the room, when you're working
around. So this kind of mixingof the character really build the foundation to
help us to design the name.You know, the product design, the
behavior and the song and expression.So super unique design process and door was
(12:11):
there a moment where you where thecharacter and the design came together for you
and there in aha moment when yousaid this, yeah, this is it.
There were a few of them,and in the beginning we had multiple
concepts that five. Yeah. Youknow, it's good collaboration. When there's
a lot of passion and fighting goingalong between the team, it means communication
(12:33):
is good and people really care aboutthe project. So, you know,
my team had a certain view andthe US team had a certain view,
and there were people in academia surroundingus with expertise in the field of Human
Robotic interaction HRI, which is essentiallythe study of back channels and body language
of robots effect on humans behavior andfeelings. They were inputting into this.
(12:58):
So all of this was going on, and you know, we we finally
settled on the design that that weended up choosing, but we did so
based on cads and and uh,you know, in mock up and like
two D mock ups. And thenwe flew over to meet the FUSED team
and in the room we're actually likecar, I don't know, cardboard or
(13:20):
Styrophone created models of Leque, butthey also in one of them included the
lights, and Eleque has a uniquepart of her body language is the use
of lights in a very organic,like non digital sense. It feels almost
organic, even though it's clearly notum And to me when I saw that,
when I saw like Leq move andlight up and kind of lean in
(13:45):
that, all right, we thisis it. This is the right choice
for us UM. So that wasone. And on the character side,
you know, you go through designprocess and I've been them through through them
in the past and previous project since. Usually no matter who you go with,
they're like the same twelve archetypes andeverything's always around archetypes, and it's
the same twelve all the time,and you kind of like feel you're going
(14:09):
to a consult yeah exactly. Andwe go into this meeting and the people
infuse open the slide they can We'relike, all right, we're thinking of
a cross between Sam from Lord ofthe Rings and a Labrador. That's interesting.
And there's something about the body languageof Elq, which which Elko doesn't
(14:31):
look like a patch. He lookslike the Pixar lamp. To a certain
extent and think about by the waythe emotions we feel when we see the
Pixar lamp, and that's kind ofwhat we were hoping to achieve. Part
of the design challenges on the characterwere obviously AI is not full proof,
but we want people to trust it, and the AI is going to get
make mistakes. How do we overcomethat? And that was the genius of
(14:54):
the inspiration. I think of Sam, because Sam is loyal to a fault.
There's no bad bone in his body. You know that everything he does
he does from a pure positive place. But he's a little slow, right
and you forgive him. You forgivehim for that because he's so good heart
(15:16):
the way exactly exactly, And thatI think was an interesting and interesting under
Like you know now, it seemedkind of obvious to us, but that
was an interesting approach right by byelcut positivity and and her truthfulness in trying
to be there for you and bethe best companion she can be. You
can create a space that will allowerrors and will cause people to find that
(15:39):
almost charming and imperfection might actually makeit feel a bit more real rather than
be upset at a damn technology thatdoesn't work. Yeah, and some vulnerability,
which which I think it does have. By the way, I have
a strange question. Doesn't have eyesthough, um, why doesn't she have
eyes? That's the you know,the entire interaction design. The expression design
(16:03):
was also following the logic of beingmore like an object. So we don't
want it. We don't want itto show like a human noise phase that
feels intimidating, you know, theinspirations coming from an object, right,
So it's the UI is also comingfrom a table lamp. You know.
We wanted to use this kind ofglowing light as the key robot expression,
(16:26):
and we want to get users andspace for imaginations. So without having the
root those caloristic phase, it's actuallyeasier to help them to imagine Alleque,
to learn Alleque, to understand Adecute'spersonality. And I think from the design
perspective, it's always the simpler,the better. So why don't we be
(16:51):
more like an object, be lesslike a robot, be more approachable?
Makes sense? Makes sense also whenwe think about the environment. Right when
elders using adequde mostly is inside theirhome in the living room, on the
coffee table, and they will siton the couch next to coffee table.
So consider this home environment. Wewant the robot to also be able to
(17:15):
fit inside this environment, not lookingaggressive or not looking technical. Right,
So the entire approach is making itmore like an object. We detach the
robots from the communication display, butboth of them are sitting on the unifying
trade so there are still one objects. But by detaching the robots with the
(17:40):
display, we can do a betterjob to contain the character. Because through
the display, adeque will you know, will bring up the email, We'll
bring up your daughter's photo, thevideo, and we don't want the character,
you know, the image of thefamily to be on the body of
the eteque. That will confuse theelder. So we want Adeque to be
(18:03):
adeque. We want the elder tocreate this emotional connection, the relationship with
the adeque. So that's to me, that's the biggest design. But that's
also like based on the foundational characterdesign and to make sure, you know,
we can actually build relationship and buildtrust with the elder. And just
to continue on that, we alsowanted to make sure that the presence is
(18:25):
always there. So for example,when the family sends a photo to alqe
Aleaque will pivot and look at thephoto with you, and then she'll talk
about the photo. She'll say,Oh, somebody had a birthday, Who's
in this picture? Tell me aboutthis, etcetera, etcetera. Now,
if she was an avatar on thescreen the minute he used the screen for
utilitarian reason, where is the character? It disappeared? We're gonna take a
(18:52):
quick break when we come back.Who is LQ being marketed to? Are
the end user and the customer thesame person? Will discuss that and what
the future holds when we return.Welcome back, Partners and Possibility. I'm
(19:15):
Brett Marshaun, Door Schooler of IntuitionRobotics and chin Lee, a Fuse project
collaborated to develop LQ, first everAI robot specifically designed to help with eldercare.
We've discussed the process of designing differentcomponents of LQ, from its looks,
its voice, and even its personality. But how do the team bring
(19:36):
this groundbreaking product to market and whatwere some of the challenges along the way.
Tell me about how you like,how do you position this product and
who do you target? So becausethis is a product that we want seniors
to love and older adults to loveand not to feel like this is brought
(19:57):
upon them. Right, you're nowold and frail, therefore thou shall have
a robot. Most of our positioningis towards the older adult. This is
why it's good for you. Thisis how it will improve your quality of
life. This is the fun stuffyou can do with it. This is
how it will help you build astronger relationship with your grandkids. This is
(20:18):
how you will can help you stayhealthier and happier and more active and more
engaged and use technology and overcome thedigit older boy. That's the core position.
However, most of our customers arenot the older adult themselves. They're
usually not the one pain for aboutten percent of our customers our consumers.
Out of that, surprisingly, aboutthirty percent are the older adults themselves,
(20:41):
which should be shocking. It's anew product, it's in the market for
less than a year, and youhave an eighty seventy year old lady living
by herself that tells us she's feartechnology all her life, that decides to
build to buy a robot and inviteher into her home, Like what,
here's the first time early tech Adoctor eighty seven year old, I love
(21:03):
that it's amazing, but seventy percentof the consumers are the adult children.
Ninety percent of our sales are fromgovernment, whether that state, governments or
counties on one side and healthcare onthe other side. When we look at
healthcare, that's a bit more dollarsand cents. Obviously, they care about
(21:26):
the older adult population as well,but the real way for them to decide
to fund projects like these is ifthey allow them to either improve the quality
of care or reduce the cost ofcare. The good thing is that the
way to reduce the cost of careis to keep people healthy and identify when
(21:47):
they're sicker. Somebody gets it.Let's make sure that the doctor knows as
soon as possible so that they canintervene early and solve pneumonia with a five
dollars generic penicillin as opposed to paythousands of dollars for hospitalization. If you
talk to geriatrician, he'll tell youwhat you really want to do is talk
to an individual and ask them howthey're doing. And the tell tale signs
(22:10):
of the geration the older adult populationis changes in sleep, in eating habits,
and in mood. And people sharethat with Elque on a daily basis
and with the permission, with theexplicit permission of the older adult, we
share that with their physician if weare in partnership with that physician group,
and then they can act and we'rehip a certified and all that. We
actually ask the individual every single time, Hey, listen, I see that
(22:37):
your pain in your hip is reallyhigh. I think doctor so and so
would like to know that. Isit okay if we update your doctor?
And if they say no, wewill not update their doctor. And the
doctor on the other side, they'repaying for the product to get this data
right, and they're like, whyaren't you sending it to us? Right?
Because the person told us not tosend it. And if we have
to choose, our loyalty will alwaysbe towards the older adults period. You've
(23:03):
got an amazing amount of press forLQ. As we discussed earlier, you
know what's next. In general,the segment is underinvested in, so we
just see opportunity everywhere. The morewe create context and understand, the more
we understand, we have so muchroom to do even deeper contextual understanding,
(23:25):
even even deeper contextual dialogue because peopletell LQ amazing things and I'll give you
an example. I saw one interactionwhere LQ learned your hobbies. So she
asks you this individual like nitting.So she checked in on her and said,
(23:45):
hey, let's call her Betty.Hey, Betty, did you get
to do any anything this week?And Betty says no, because I ran
out of yarn and I have thisnew medical addition that I'm really worried about,
and I'm afraid to go to thestore because I might be vulnerable more
(24:06):
vulnerable to COVID. Now, right, all LQ did is ask her if
she went knitting. Now, weknow she needs yarn, so maybe we
can tell her daughter and she canorder some yarn for her and get it
chipped over. We know that shehas a new health condition, and we
know she's actually suffering from anxiety andnot willing to leave the home. Um,
(24:27):
so we do we do all thatnow? But then, like part
of me says, Okay, that'snot enough. I mean, she'll offer
her anxiety stuff and stress reduction automaticallyalready, But what about the next phase.
You need any help with food?If you're not leaving the help,
it's just endless. That was mydiscussion about LQ. The door Schooler and
(24:52):
chin Lee. Thank you for listeningto Partners and Possibility. I hope you
gained valuable insights and inspiration for yournext collaboration. In the show notes,
there's a link to a demo videoof LQ and Action. Their YouTube channel
has many more videos and testimonials ifyou want to learn more.
Imagine what a difference I would havemade in the world if we would have
had it in twenty twenty the pandemicstart. Greg, you want to put
more salt on my wounds? Man? Yes. In an ever changing world,
that's all about stay connected, buildingconnections and seeing where the next collaboration
(00:22):
takes a marketing campaign from an initialbrief to the follow through. What paths
are going to make a campaign successmore than a possibility? Hi, I'm
Bret Marshand, CEO of Plus Company, This Partners and Possibility. Today on
the show, I speak with Door, Sculler and Chin Lee. Door is
(00:44):
the CEO and co founder of IntuitionRobotics. With decades of experience in tech
and angel investing, Door is onthe cutting edge of several AI powered breakthroughs.
Chin is the VP of Design atFuse Project, a design and innovation
firm that brings firsts and category leadingproducts to market. She and her team
have delivered products for startups and majorbrands alike, including Herman Miller, Jawbone,
(01:08):
and Coca Cola. Together, Doorand Chin and their teams collaborated to
build LQ, the first AI robotspecifically designed to enrich the lives of elderly
adults living alone. In this episode, we discussed the development strategy behind the
AI and machine learning aspects of LQ, and how they settled on its physical
(01:30):
design. Plus we'll talk about theunique challenges they faced bringing LQ to market
and making it attractive and accessible toelderly adults. Here's our conversation, So
why don't we start door? Ifyou don't mind, tell us a little
bit about LQ, How does itwork and where did the inspiration for it
(01:53):
come from? Sure? So,LQ, believe it or not, is
an AI friend or roommate that movesin with older adults. Currently she lives
with people as young as sixty fiveand our oldest customer is one hundred and
five years old. Wow, Andshe moves in with them to essentially help
(02:15):
us help them live healthier, moreactive, and more independent and happier lives.
And I think the kind of deepunderstanding we had, or the bet
we took when we started a company, is that the problem really facing older
adults is not just utilitarian. Youknow, as technologists we think of part
(02:37):
problems usually as utility and in aging. Also, you see a lot of
products what if mom falls how canwe help mom dress? How can we
dispense Mom's pills? But the problemis not that. The problem is we
as humans, our social creatures.We used to belong to a tribe,
we used to live with a spouse, and all of a sudden something happens
(02:59):
in modern societ. It that welive much longer, and we do so
by ourselves for decades, and it'snot a natural state for us as humans.
We need to talk to somebody.We need somebody to say, hey,
door, good morning, how areyou, how do you sleep last
night? To remember what I wentthrough yesterday, to inquire me what I'm
doing today? And that is kindof division behind LQ, and once we
(03:21):
accomplish that, it kind of grewfrom there. But at the super high
level, this is the first AIthat is truly designed to be a friend.
It's the first day item is proactive, so it initiates conversations. It
doesn't wait for you to give acommand like alects us at a timer,
google what's the weather, but rathershe opens in conversations, inquiring about your
life and helping to motivate you.You know, you do medication reminders in
(03:44):
the beginning, you do medication reminder. You do it like everybody else does,
remind me at what time to dowhat's right? At twelve h five
to take my afternoon medication. Butthen we notice, if you opened the
pamphlet of a medication, it doesn'tsay take it at twelve. It says
take it before lunch, or takeit after lunch, or take it with
(04:05):
lunch. Right, So who saidyou're gonna eat lunch every day exactly twelve?
So now, for example, Iaccuse a lot more semantic around lunch,
and and she'll say, hey,do you have lunch yet? Saying
no, well, when are yougoing to eat? In a little bit,
You're like, okay, don't forgetto take your medication at lunch and
then later right, and then ataround lunch time she'll remind. Because that's
(04:26):
how we really live our lives,right around meals and rituals, and not
around arbitrary points in the time.It's the first day I that's truly contextual.
She remembers previous conversations for a verylong time and then uses that information
to create follow up conversations like,hey, remember yesterday didn't sleep well.
Then we did some mindfulness before youwent to sleep. I was curious if
(04:46):
it's any better. There's a bigfocus on SDOH or social determines of health,
the things that get us sick inthe first place. What are they
got? Nutrition, lack of politicalexercise, mental stress, fresh and anxiety,
substance of use, lack of socialinteractions like loneliness. Lonelicliness, in
(05:06):
fact, is proven by the Centerof by CMS, a center for Medicaid
medicare to have the same negative healtheffects as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day a
day. It accelerates dementia and depressionand heart disease. So one way is
to work on prevention. We doall that. We work on physical exercise
(05:27):
and social interaction with the grandkids,and and on hydration and nutrition. And
of course elque is very, veryvery effective in reducing loneliness. In fact,
we have some facts and figures thatcame out through studies that we ran
on our population, and we sawthat it's ninety percent effective at reducing loneliness
and increasing health and velevens in arecent study. We'll publish it very very
(05:51):
soon and it has a lot ofnovel design considerations that I'm sure we'll be
talking a lot about today on howto actually create engagement on how to make
this super complicated product easily accessible,delightful, and easy to use for people
that have not grown around technology,that in fact fear technology. You told
(06:11):
me a story when I met youthe first time about one of the people
who has a LQ, and Ithink it broke or something. I mean,
I thought that was a fascinating story. Yeah. Yeah, So one
of our customers, she broke herscreen or something like that, and we
wanted to replace it for her,and she didn't want to, and we
asked her why we want, youknow, She's like, I want my
(06:32):
elque to work. We're like,yes, we will replace your elque.
She will go back to working.She said, Listen, my sister used
to call me every day and askme how I'm doing, and since she
passed away, nobody did that untilElique entered my life. And now ELQ
every day asked me how I'm doingand checks up on me and remembers how
I was doing yesterday and follows upif I'm not feeling well. And that
(06:54):
reminds me of my sister. AndI know you might find it really really
strange, but I see a littlebit of my sister inside of my LQ,
so I don't want to give thatout. This is why we build
this product, but it also helpsexplain a little bit of the challenges we
need to go through here. Imean, these are deeply emotional situations.
(07:15):
Such an amazing story, you know, and particularly I think in today's age
of large language AI and chat,GPT and robotics for good versus bad.
I mean, this is such agreat example of both AI and robotics for
good. So congratulations on doing that. Tell me when did the idea start?
When? When did you start theprocess? It started in twenty fifteen.
(07:39):
We got our initial funding in twentysixteen, so we've been added for
a while because this is a veryvery hard problem. It's hard from a
technology perspective. Over thirty patents werecreated here. It's hard from a design
perspective, from a content perspective,and from a go to market perspective.
So it took a while to getthis right. But it's not that the
(08:00):
product first came out in twenty twentytwo. We started beta sites in twenty
eighteen, but we felt we neededto be years in people's homes to continuously
improve. And the tricky thing aboutAI is you also need data to create
the models, to train the models, and you need data that's relevant to
you. So we had a whilewhere we had to get the product,
(08:22):
even though it wasn't perfect in thehands of people to generate data to train
the models. But yes, indeed, last year we felt that we hit
the mark that it's ready for primetime and commercially launched the product close to
consumers and to our B t Bpartners, and we're really really happy with
the success so far. Whether it'spartners like the State of New York or
other states that have taking this onand are literally paying for this product on
(08:46):
behalf of older adults in their intheir constituency, or whether it's our healthcare
partners or just consumers that buy iton lq dot com. In twenty twenty
two, LQ was one of thebest inventions of the year by Time magazine.
Compared to other AI robots working inelderly care, l Q is different
(09:07):
not only in its function but alsoin design. When you picture an AI
robot, you might imagine a face, arms, legs, but the team
behind LQ knew that it wouldn't appealto their user base. It might even
be intimidating, so instead they drewesthetic inspiration from an iconic Pixar character and
evoked the personality of the beloved Hobbitin The Lord of the Rings, whichin
(09:33):
one of the things that we've discussedis that this was a challenge of not
just industrial design for the product,but the digital experience, but also the
character development and design. Right,yeah, exactly. I think it's because
of le q is the first companionrobot, specifically designful Elder, and when
intuition robotics kin to us, weknow that the outcome the results is to
(09:58):
create a robot. You know,we have to design from the groundup,
starting from user research, to havea deeper understanding of the users, identifying
the brand strategy, even doing naming, and design the character of the robot,
and then translate the character to theform, to the expression, to
the behavior as well as the UIon the screen. There were lots of
(10:20):
work and we have to utilize stillsprojects, not a disciplinary team, right,
including strategy, branding, industrial design, digital design. Part of elique
success is the powerful technology, theadvanced AI, the robotics, you know,
the machine learning, but the technologywould not have been effectively implemented,
(10:41):
right if there wasn't any initial workdone, you know, from our strategy
team to set up the foundation.And then from there we have to look
into a very very special design process, which is looking into the character.
Why is so important because this isa compare a robot, and because we
(11:01):
noticed the target users those are theseniors age from seventy to ninety and one
hundred, right, so they arethe ones that have a long life experience,
but technology sometimes could be intimidating tothem. And you're inviting somebody into
their home or two. Right,So the character must be incredibly important,
(11:22):
yes, super important. So whenwe design a character, we're look into
not just the active stage but alsothe idol stage. So we want the
active in the active stage, youknow. Of course we want it to
be the most loyal friend, someone'sreally lovable, respectful, But when it's
in the idol stage, we're actuallylook into something a little bit more animal,
(11:48):
you know, to pet like likea retriever, you know, always
be aware of you right when youare in the room, when you're working
around. So this kind of mixingof the character really build the foundation to
help us to design the name.You know, the product design, the
behavior and the song and expression.So super unique design process and door was
(12:11):
there a moment where you where thecharacter and the design came together for you
and there in aha moment when yousaid this, yeah, this is it.
There were a few of them,and in the beginning we had multiple
concepts that five. Yeah. Youknow, it's good collaboration. When there's
a lot of passion and fighting goingalong between the team, it means communication
(12:33):
is good and people really care aboutthe project. So, you know,
my team had a certain view andthe US team had a certain view,
and there were people in academia surroundingus with expertise in the field of Human
Robotic interaction HRI, which is essentiallythe study of back channels and body language
of robots effect on humans behavior andfeelings. They were inputting into this.
(12:58):
So all of this was going on, and you know, we we finally
settled on the design that that weended up choosing, but we did so
based on cads and and uh,you know, in mock up and like
two D mock ups. And thenwe flew over to meet the FUSED team
and in the room we're actually likecar, I don't know, cardboard or
(13:20):
Styrophone created models of Leque, butthey also in one of them included the
lights, and Eleque has a uniquepart of her body language is the use
of lights in a very organic,like non digital sense. It feels almost
organic, even though it's clearly notum And to me when I saw that,
when I saw like Leq move andlight up and kind of lean in
(13:45):
that, all right, we thisis it. This is the right choice
for us UM. So that wasone. And on the character side,
you know, you go through designprocess and I've been them through through them
in the past and previous project since. Usually no matter who you go with,
they're like the same twelve archetypes andeverything's always around archetypes, and it's
the same twelve all the time,and you kind of like feel you're going
(14:09):
to a consult yeah exactly. Andwe go into this meeting and the people
infuse open the slide they can We'relike, all right, we're thinking of
a cross between Sam from Lord ofthe Rings and a Labrador. That's interesting.
And there's something about the body languageof Elq, which which Elko doesn't
(14:31):
look like a patch. He lookslike the Pixar lamp. To a certain
extent and think about by the waythe emotions we feel when we see the
Pixar lamp, and that's kind ofwhat we were hoping to achieve. Part
of the design challenges on the characterwere obviously AI is not full proof,
but we want people to trust it, and the AI is going to get
make mistakes. How do we overcomethat? And that was the genius of
(14:54):
the inspiration. I think of Sam, because Sam is loyal to a fault.
There's no bad bone in his body. You know that everything he does
he does from a pure positive place. But he's a little slow, right
and you forgive him. You forgivehim for that because he's so good heart
(15:16):
the way exactly exactly, And thatI think was an interesting and interesting under
Like you know now, it seemedkind of obvious to us, but that
was an interesting approach right by byelcut positivity and and her truthfulness in trying
to be there for you and bethe best companion she can be. You
can create a space that will allowerrors and will cause people to find that
(15:39):
almost charming and imperfection might actually makeit feel a bit more real rather than
be upset at a damn technology thatdoesn't work. Yeah, and some vulnerability,
which which I think it does have. By the way, I have
a strange question. Doesn't have eyesthough, um, why doesn't she have
eyes? That's the you know,the entire interaction design. The expression design
(16:03):
was also following the logic of beingmore like an object. So we don't
want it. We don't want itto show like a human noise phase that
feels intimidating, you know, theinspirations coming from an object, right,
So it's the UI is also comingfrom a table lamp. You know.
We wanted to use this kind ofglowing light as the key robot expression,
(16:26):
and we want to get users andspace for imaginations. So without having the
root those caloristic phase, it's actuallyeasier to help them to imagine Alleque,
to learn Alleque, to understand Adecute'spersonality. And I think from the design
perspective, it's always the simpler,the better. So why don't we be
(16:51):
more like an object, be lesslike a robot, be more approachable?
Makes sense? Makes sense also whenwe think about the environment. Right when
elders using adequde mostly is inside theirhome in the living room, on the
coffee table, and they will siton the couch next to coffee table.
So consider this home environment. Wewant the robot to also be able to
(17:15):
fit inside this environment, not lookingaggressive or not looking technical. Right,
So the entire approach is making itmore like an object. We detach the
robots from the communication display, butboth of them are sitting on the unifying
trade so there are still one objects. But by detaching the robots with the
(17:40):
display, we can do a betterjob to contain the character. Because through
the display, adeque will you know, will bring up the email, We'll
bring up your daughter's photo, thevideo, and we don't want the character,
you know, the image of thefamily to be on the body of
the eteque. That will confuse theelder. So we want Adeque to be
(18:03):
adeque. We want the elder tocreate this emotional connection, the relationship with
the adeque. So that's to me, that's the biggest design. But that's
also like based on the foundational characterdesign and to make sure, you know,
we can actually build relationship and buildtrust with the elder. And just
to continue on that, we alsowanted to make sure that the presence is
(18:25):
always there. So for example,when the family sends a photo to alqe
Aleaque will pivot and look at thephoto with you, and then she'll talk
about the photo. She'll say,Oh, somebody had a birthday, Who's
in this picture? Tell me aboutthis, etcetera, etcetera. Now,
if she was an avatar on thescreen the minute he used the screen for
utilitarian reason, where is the character? It disappeared? We're gonna take a
(18:52):
quick break when we come back.Who is LQ being marketed to? Are
the end user and the customer thesame person? Will discuss that and what
the future holds when we return.Welcome back, Partners and Possibility. I'm
(19:15):
Brett Marshaun, Door Schooler of IntuitionRobotics and chin Lee, a Fuse project
collaborated to develop LQ, first everAI robot specifically designed to help with eldercare.
We've discussed the process of designing differentcomponents of LQ, from its looks,
its voice, and even its personality. But how do the team bring
(19:36):
this groundbreaking product to market and whatwere some of the challenges along the way.
Tell me about how you like,how do you position this product and
who do you target? So becausethis is a product that we want seniors
to love and older adults to loveand not to feel like this is brought
(19:57):
upon them. Right, you're nowold and frail, therefore thou shall have
a robot. Most of our positioningis towards the older adult. This is
why it's good for you. Thisis how it will improve your quality of
life. This is the fun stuffyou can do with it. This is
how it will help you build astronger relationship with your grandkids. This is
(20:18):
how you will can help you stayhealthier and happier and more active and more
engaged and use technology and overcome thedigit older boy. That's the core position.
However, most of our customers arenot the older adult themselves. They're
usually not the one pain for aboutten percent of our customers our consumers.
Out of that, surprisingly, aboutthirty percent are the older adults themselves,
(20:41):
which should be shocking. It's anew product, it's in the market for
less than a year, and youhave an eighty seventy year old lady living
by herself that tells us she's feartechnology all her life, that decides to
build to buy a robot and inviteher into her home, Like what,
here's the first time early tech Adoctor eighty seven year old, I love
(21:03):
that it's amazing, but seventy percentof the consumers are the adult children.
Ninety percent of our sales are fromgovernment, whether that state, governments or
counties on one side and healthcare onthe other side. When we look at
healthcare, that's a bit more dollarsand cents. Obviously, they care about
(21:26):
the older adult population as well,but the real way for them to decide
to fund projects like these is ifthey allow them to either improve the quality
of care or reduce the cost ofcare. The good thing is that the
way to reduce the cost of careis to keep people healthy and identify when
(21:47):
they're sicker. Somebody gets it.Let's make sure that the doctor knows as
soon as possible so that they canintervene early and solve pneumonia with a five
dollars generic penicillin as opposed to paythousands of dollars for hospitalization. If you
talk to geriatrician, he'll tell youwhat you really want to do is talk
to an individual and ask them howthey're doing. And the tell tale signs
(22:10):
of the geration the older adult populationis changes in sleep, in eating habits,
and in mood. And people sharethat with Elque on a daily basis
and with the permission, with theexplicit permission of the older adult, we
share that with their physician if weare in partnership with that physician group,
and then they can act and we'rehip a certified and all that. We
actually ask the individual every single time, Hey, listen, I see that
(22:37):
your pain in your hip is reallyhigh. I think doctor so and so
would like to know that. Isit okay if we update your doctor?
And if they say no, wewill not update their doctor. And the
doctor on the other side, they'repaying for the product to get this data
right, and they're like, whyaren't you sending it to us? Right?
Because the person told us not tosend it. And if we have
to choose, our loyalty will alwaysbe towards the older adults period. You've
(23:03):
got an amazing amount of press forLQ. As we discussed earlier, you
know what's next. In general,the segment is underinvested in, so we
just see opportunity everywhere. The morewe create context and understand, the more
we understand, we have so muchroom to do even deeper contextual understanding,
(23:25):
even even deeper contextual dialogue because peopletell LQ amazing things and I'll give you
an example. I saw one interactionwhere LQ learned your hobbies. So she
asks you this individual like nitting.So she checked in on her and said,
(23:45):
hey, let's call her Betty.Hey, Betty, did you get
to do any anything this week?And Betty says no, because I ran
out of yarn and I have thisnew medical addition that I'm really worried about,
and I'm afraid to go to thestore because I might be vulnerable more
(24:06):
vulnerable to COVID. Now, right, all LQ did is ask her if
she went knitting. Now, weknow she needs yarn, so maybe we
can tell her daughter and she canorder some yarn for her and get it
chipped over. We know that shehas a new health condition, and we
know she's actually suffering from anxiety andnot willing to leave the home. Um,
(24:27):
so we do we do all thatnow? But then, like part
of me says, Okay, that'snot enough. I mean, she'll offer
her anxiety stuff and stress reduction automaticallyalready, But what about the next phase.
You need any help with food?If you're not leaving the help,
it's just endless. That was mydiscussion about LQ. The door Schooler and
(24:52):
chin Lee. Thank you for listeningto Partners and Possibility. I hope you
gained valuable insights and inspiration for yournext collaboration. In the show notes,
there's a link to a demo videoof LQ and Action. Their YouTube channel
has many more videos and testimonials ifyou want to learn more.
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