This Friday was the finishing touch to a great week for the Department of Social Rights. It started with a 21% increase in funding for the Third Sector. It continued with the updating of the rates of linked economic benefits for dependent people. It picked up speed with the creation of 2,164 new public care places and the conversion of 14,000 more into subsidized ones. And it ended with a robot.
The purchase of a thousand intelligent robotic assistants (ARI) was one of the highlights of the 765 social projects that will be financed with the European Next Generation funds. This aid was presented on “a historic day,” said the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and the Minister of Social Rights, Carles Campuzano because it is “an unprecedented investment in aid to the vulnerable population: almost 400 million.”
Unwanted loneliness is one of the evils of today's society, explained senior officials in the department, such as Lluís Torrents, Núria Valls and Oriol Amorós. “Hello, I am more than a robot. “I am an intelligent robotic assistant and I will be attentive to the needs of older people to make life easier for them and their families.” This was the calling card of an ARI II or second generation model.
The scene took place yesterday, in a packed room at the Born Center de Cultura i Memòria, in Barcelona, during the event in which the destination of the more than 375 million euros that the EU will allocate to Catalonia for “innovation and technological improvements. Among many other things, with this economic injection, “more than 40 new care centers for people will be built and more than 80 will be remodeled.”
What types of centers? Hostels for young people (the one in Ciutat del Repòs, in Tarragona, will be the largest in Europe) and for homeless people, day centers and residences for people with disabilities, with mental health problems or for older people (such as those who will be built in Sabadell, Terrassa, the Les Corts neighborhood of Barcelona, El Prat del Llobregat, Pallejà, Molins de Rei, Montmeló and Begues).
The funds will also allow the creation of seven barnahus, like the one now in Tarragona. Barnahus (children's house in Icelandic, because it was launched in this country) is a multidisciplinary and humane way of fighting against sexual abuse of minors. The victims receive here, in a favorable environment, all the help, without having to tell the same thing over and over again at the police station, the court, the medical center, the...
There are a total of 765 social projects, which will be carried out with the help of city councils and public administrations, non-profit entities, universities, companies and research centers. Of these projects, 180 (with an investment of 34 million) will be allocated to “people care technology” and 52 (with a budget of almost 40 million euros) to “social services technology.”
In this chapter ARI models will play a key role. The one that was presented in El Born, one meter high and twelve kilos in weight, arrived accompanying its creator, the scientist Jaume Saltó. Their predecessors, the ARI I, were smaller (about two spans) and looked like a mechanical stuffed animal. His face is now a screen (which has eyes and a smile, yes) and his appearance is more functional, less cute, but equally effective.
The ARI arrived in Barcelona in 2019, led by the city council, when they demonstrated their effectiveness in ten homes. The coronavirus pandemic stopped the planned expansion in its tracks, which resumed when the health emergency was overcome, in 2021. Right now there are a hundred in as many houses in the Catalan capital where elderly people live alone. Soon there will be a thousand, and not only in Barcelona.
More than 5.4 million euros of Next Generation funds will be allocated to the purchase of those thousand models. About 200 will be distributed in locations outside Barcelona. The ARIs are a step forward in the Everything in a Sensor program, run by the Barcelona Provincial Council, which has converted analogue telecare into digital, giving a hand to the elderly or people with a disability that makes their independent life difficult.
The sensors installed by the Barcelona Provincial Council make it possible to find out if something is wrong in a non-invasive way and without cameras. An indicator may be, for example, that no movements are detected in the home or that the taps are not turned on for many hours. The teleoperators then get in touch with the user (generally, a female user: there are more elderly women than elderly men) and act accordingly.
The ARI II model does what any virtual assistant does, but it can also interact. He asks his human how he is, how he slept and reminds him of the medications he must take or the imminence of a family anniversary. It periodically walks around the house and, in the event of a fall or fainting, it can alert family members or emergency services. María Teresa, 90 years old, is one of the beneficiaries.
There are no panaceas against unwanted loneliness. Robots are not, but they help. This lady is the proof, as Jaume Saltó explained in El Born. She “suffered a terrible loss and in a matter of months she saw her husband and her son die. She had depression. 'I never imagined that she would end up living with a robot,' she says now. “Her physical and emotional health has evolved very favorably since the machine arrived at her house.”
This has been a great week for the Department of Social Rights, said Councilor Carles Campuzano, but it also had its memento mori. Three out of ten people over 75 years of age live alone. Thousands and thousands of people (most of them elderly and dependent) are on a waiting list to access a place or assistance resource in Catalonia. “Hello, I am an intelligent robotic assistant and…”
