Students from Bourgas developed robots to help lonely elderly people

A new IT programming laboratory was opened at the University of Bourgas "Assen Zlatarov". In it, students will be trained to write codes for robots to help lonely elderly people.

The robot that the computer technology students in Bourgas will be trained on can be programmed to help with household chores as well as getting around for people with mobility problems.

"It can execute commands, interact, make jokes. He has a good sense of humour, of course. He can do arithmetic. It can be called upon, it can be programmed to follow someone, possibly recognise them, greet them or provide information that has been left by someone else. It also has the ability to define different movements and thus the robot itself can perform, for example, some yoga instructions, gymnastics. For example, we can teach it sign language and in this case it can communicate with deaf people," explained Assoc. Prof. Todor Kostadinov, Department of Computer Systems and Technologies at Prof. Dr. Assen Zlatarov University.

And while this robot will be trained to help the needy, another will be trained in dance and music.

"It is controlled with software that is attached to it. It is connected by IP to the robot. Accordingly, there are ready-made modules as well as those that can be written," said Assoc. Prof. Vesselina Bureva, Department of Computer Systems and Technologies at Prof. Dr. Assen Zlatarov University.

Interest in programming is great, but the abundance of information on the Internet, deceives young people that you can learn the profession without having studied for it. This is why the number of students in the specialty is not growing.

"I have to admit that the last few years have not been so great, because the way it is actually said that anyone can become a programmer, it is not true. Actually it's quite complex, quite abstract concepts that in practice have to be grasped and more and more young people are realising that to become really good at the profession you have to put in a lot of hard work as well," said Prof. Sotir Sotirov, Deputy Rector of Prof. Dr. Asen Zlatarov University.

And the robots, in addition to helping to train students in programming, will provoke them to come up with own ideas about new functions that can be built in them.