Meet Cutii: a Fully-Operated Robot Designed to Enrich Social Connection for Housebound Seniors

Richard Jacobs: Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius podcast series. My guest today is Richard Marshall. He’s a business development director. The company that he’s working for they’ve created a robot that works with the elderly, I guess to help them become more independent, keep their peace of mind, et cetera. That’s called Cutii. The website is cutii.io. It’s part of Richard’s company and we’ll get more into the details in a second. But Rich, thanks for coming. How are you doing?

Richard Marshall: Yeah, Richard, great though. Look, I really appreciate this opportunity and it’s great to meet you.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah. So tell me about you know, the company and what’s the premise of it?

Richard Marshall: Well, look, I think your introduction is factual, but I would say, Richard, that yeah, at its core, what we’re doing is combating loneliness for seniors, for our elderly and let’s be frank, in virtually every society in the world now. Because you likely know the world’s population is aging rapidly and we have a tidal wave of people here in the United States who are entering retirement. I think the numbers are something like 10,000 a baby boomer generation. People are retiring every day in the United States now

Richard Jacobs: A day. Wow. That’s amazing.

Richard Marshall: Isn’t it amazing. Yup. It’s incredible when you think about it. So this is a societal change and it’s a time of happiness and joy for a lot of people. Retirement is something that a lot of people look forward to. But there is another angle to it, which is there’s also a growing problem of disconnection and loneliness for people in society. And one of those groups is our senior, so elderly people and for various reasons, there’s an increasing dislocation and disconnection going on. And that’s really what Cutii and what our services are all about, which is connecting people who want to age in place at home. So another factor driving innovation in this area is, of course, people want to stay at home for as long as possible. And our goal is to allow people who otherwise would need to move into different facilities to allow them the opportunity to stay at home will stay where they prefer to be as long as possible, remaining connected to the outside world, combating loneliness and feeling secure in the process. And we do that with a robotic companion called Cutii and no doubt, we’ll talk a little bit Richard, about the features of Cutii and the very cool aspects of the robotic nature of it. But what I would save right at the beginning is the robot is a very important aspect of what we do. And it provides autonomous movement. It’s completely voice-controlled. So it’s really, really simple for people to use.

Richard Jacobs: Is it a robot that walks around and moves with a screen on its face or no screen? Or is it just simply a screen? Like what’s the function of it?

Richard Marshall: Yeah, indeed. So it’s deliberately designed to not be humanlike. Okay. So it’s a robotic device that moves around on a number of wheels. It’s approximately five foot tall with a neck that using your voice, you can control to move up and down. And the interface is effectively a screen at the top of the robot. And it’s that screen which uses interact with the robot itself, but more importantly with people outside of their home.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. And you know, how big is it? Does it sit in one spot? Does it move around and how’d people interact with it?

Richard Marshall: And so it’s an autonomous self-propelling robotic device that we’ll learn the layout of the living space of seniors. So imagine my mother who’s aging in place, she lives perhaps on based here in the Boston area in Massachusetts, but maybe she lives in Ohio. And it’s difficult for me and my brothers and sisters to check in on her physically as regularly as we’d like. Well, our mother could have Kurian in her house or in her living space, which might be the living room and kitchen area and Cutii will learn the living space. So Cutii knows where my mother’s sofa is. Knows where the kitchen table is, for example. And we can ourselves remotely, we can call her up. And we can control Cutii ourselves and send it to our mother and maybe our mother spends a lot of her time on her sofa. She’s not as mobile as she was previously moving perhaps between the sofa and the kitchen. And so we can control remotely send Cutii to her and engage in an enriching experience. So a video conference or call, she can send and receive text messages just using her voice. She can answer a call using her voice. She can instigate calls with us using her voice. And similarly, my mother would be able to say, Cutii, come to the sofa and Cutii would come to her. It’s very easy to use user experience. And in that way make the process of connection for seniors that much easier because there are many, many well intention technologies, Richard, which are intended to tackle this problem. And ours is one of those, but we would say we need to be very cautious about throwing technology at these problems without really understanding how people will use them. And I know that that’s something our team the makers of Cutii have done really, really well in the last four years. So this robot, the services that it provides for people are completely designed from scratch, 100% for this use case for this use. So it’s been designed with seniors over the last number of years specifically for this. So it’s not a generic robotic technology that’s rolling around looking for an application. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite is being designed, whether it’s the physical form the services that it offers, the user experience using it has been completely designed for this use case.

Richard Jacobs: So why not do this to a software program and a screen. Why do you need to have this thing running around? Is it because it’s part of pets, part companion and the movement of it around the person’s apartment or houses is critical?

Richard Marshall: Look, it’s clearly a very valid question, Richard. It’s designed to be mobile and autonomously mobile for a number of reasons. And the main one being the services we offer include connectivity to people outside of the senior’s home. And that can be friends and families. So the example I gave thus far, it relates to that. And the second connectivity that Cutii allows is emergency response. So if my mother, they’re in Ohio if she falls in the living room and she doesn’t have a phone with her or is out of reach she can use her voice to ask Cutii to instigate an emergency workflow and she can use Cutii to instigate an emergency workflow and Cutii will call a series of emergency contacts. And when responding to those emergency calls the emergency responder can move Cutii to the senior. So again in both cases thus far, the fact that Cutii can be moved to the senior is actually quite important. The person does not happen often walking around, moving from screen to screen a lot of the times in their daily life. And this accounts for that. And then the third aspect, the third level of connectivity that we offer to the outside world is remote patient monitoring. So similarly, for example, my mother might have a clinician who irregularly wants to check in with her in Ohio, but perhaps she’s remote and lives in a rural environment or its cost or staff in availability. It’s difficult for people to visit her home regularly. The clinician, the practitioner can instigate a remote patient monitoring session again, simply by establishing and using the senior’s voice to respond to the call. And again, the senior could ask for Cutii to come to him or her and participate in that clinical interaction. And again, in that case, it requires mobility.

Richard Jacobs: The robot moving around the person’s house, are you at all worried about them tripping on it, not seeing it and falling over it? I mean, does it also knows that if just the furniture where the person is, you know, where they’re, I usually call it the robots person. So they can stay near them, but not too near, not under flipped, you know, like at home or dogs or trip over them all the time. So it may be important to look at them.

Richard Marshall: Yeah, look, that’s a fair question. So the device is fitted with a full range of sensors, infrared and otherwise. You know the analogy I’d make is if you think of a Roomba robotic vacuum. And this clearly is not one of those, but in a similar way, the Roomba is a way of impediments and blockages. And it’s effectively the same way for Cutii. So if Cutii can’t move beyond a physical impediment, if that’s a person, then Cutii would stop. And the second point I would make is that Cutii is actually designed to be robust. So the footprint of it is more than a foot, roughly triangular fashion. So in the same way. It’s not a small tripping item like a Roomba. It’s not your Chanel’s that are on the ground that you might trip over walking from your sofa. Cutii designed to be fairly visible and quite tall.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. So are these in use yet? And what’s been the response from the seniors using them?

Richard Marshall: Yeah, look, I’m happy to say that Cutii is in the market now. This year’s product was launched. Now first market is actually in France and we have Cutii with customers there. And this is on the back of a significant development program. In the last period, for example, last year there were more than 300 days of service of Cutii in people’s homes. This was a beta trial there in France. But the product’s very much commercial now that is available. And we know from the beta trial work that overwhelmingly people love it and it’s worth mentioning Rich that, well, one of the I don’t know if irony is the word, but one of the factors with companion technologies, robotic technologies such as days, is that people actually also form that connection eventually with the device itself, which is not, it’s not how goal at the outset. I mean, the Cutii is really focused 100% on connecting people to other people and filling in the care gaps we’ve seen is maybe at risk of isolation. But the truth is people really love the device in and of itself. And we now heard from our early users and adopters that that’s very much the case. And then they love it.

Richard Jacobs: Well so they love it. What does love mean? Like you have any specific reactions from people that you thought were really cool or unexpected?

Richard Marshall: Well, we focus on people’s responses to human interaction. So, you know, most of the anecdotal or qualitative response with Cutii is being people expressing their enjoyment of enriching experiences with other people in live. So it’s probably also worth reiterating. And that’s actually something quite differentiating for us. I mean, you could say it makes it a little bit more hard work to scale. You know this is not an Apple iWatch or an ECHO Adopt. This is a device that is intended to bridge humans to humans. So we spend a lot of time and effort developing people, providing rich services in real-time for seniors to enjoy from the comfort of their home. So, for example, we have a number of providers of things such as museum tours or quizzes or cooking classes, woodwork classes, art, a whole range of things. And those events scheduled via Cutii to be joined in real-time by the senior, by the Cutii companion. So everything that occurs on Cutii is live. This is not streaming videos. It’s not YouTube on wheels. It’s not a playlist. And waiting to happen. This is person to person. And how the experience of the users thus far they really enjoy building that human connection with the people providing these services. The first market in France, we have a telemedicine provision. So we use a telemed provider who provides physicians via video and people really enjoy the fact that they can have told us they really enjoy the fact that they can enjoy those, again from the comfort of their home.

Richard Jacobs: Well, very good. So are people able to get the Cutii right now and where can they go to find out more about it?

Richard Marshall: Absolutely. So it’s currently available in France, our market, as I say, and I’ll direct people to our website, which is cutii.io. So we’re recording this in March 2020, so in the United States we are starting pilot trials in the US in the coming two months and the product would be commercially available towards later 2020 but it will say we are quite interested in developing relationships with strategic partners, home care organizations, senior technology providers. And so we are very keen to talk to channel partners in the United States as well.

Richard Jacobs: Well, very good Rich, thank you for coming. Again, the website is cutii.io. I hope and I appreciate you being here,

Richard Marshall: Rich. I really appreciate your time and day. It was great to talk.