He started by helping kids and, after a year, he also wants to support graduates, in this case to promote active aging. The Portuguese Teckies is preparing to launch the project she called Vida + in municipalities, homes and chambers, with a robot machine. SAPO TeK talked to Patrick Gtz, CEO of the company launched in 2018, who explains the programming behind this idea.
There is no doubt that the average life expectancy is increasing worldwide, something that has also been accompanied by a rapid technological evolution. Therefore, the elderly, even if, just out of necessity, they will end up using technology to try to solve their problems sooner or later.
It was with this idea in mind that Patrick Gtz and his team of seven more elements decided to work on a new project focused on the elderly. Designated by Vida +, the project aims to reach homes and chambers, but above all to municipalities, and, through robotics, make it possible for older people to develop three aspects: biological, social and psychological.
Through workshops with a strong practical component, the initiative aims to stimulate the learning of new knowledge, memory, reasoning and problem solving, without forgetting the motor component. On the other hand, the CEO of Teckies ensures that the sessions take place in a group, so we also work on the socialization of the elderly, the interaction they have with other people and digital inclusion. Finally, at the psychological level, the project will seek to increase the self-esteem of the elderly and promote personal development and curiosity, as well as ending the fear of new technologies.
And what is one of the best ways to ensure that this happens? For Patrick Gtz the answer is simple: through workshops with grandparents and grandchildren, activities that are part of this project. Children like to teach their grandparents, explains the company's CEO. Expected to last a year and over 40 sessions, once a week, and to travel between the various locations chosen by the institutions that join the project, the initiative can be divided into four major phases: initial workshops, programming, electronics and robotics.
Bearing in mind that smartphones and tablets are the equipment that most interest and curiosity arouse in the elderly, the Vida + project starts, exactly, with sessions explaining how they work and what they are for. After this initial phase, the next stage starts to be more exciting: programming. From here, the participants begin to understand how robots work, moving on to the other stage, that of electronics. Load and circuit become concepts that are part of the vocabulary of the participants, who, in the next and last phase, already know what to do to request certain orders from the robots.
