to do

Not a lot has changed since i last updated this blog but the idea is becoming more refined now i just really need to get it down onto paper. This will probably help me work out all the elements i want to include. So far the robotic cot thing has elements like:

- robot system with memory and ability to learn

- change in lights: colours, brightness, movement etc

- soothing noises: music, heartbeat, soft white noise (this works as a distraction mechanism)

- voice/cry recognition: different sorts of cries can be measured by frequency, urgency and pitch. The robot can remember different cries and try and calm the child.. some of this may be trial and error but a certain amount of programming will be done so it wont be a completely new process that takes a long time for each different child.

- maybe have different levels of robot/human control: the parents can decide how much monitoring they will or will not do, the benefit of this is that it generates trust, but the disadvantage is that parents will not use the device or use all the elements, or be over monitoring or not monitoring enough. Need to think about this point a little more.

- robot response: some of my research states that adequate robot response to human users creates more trust. Could have robot practically reporting back or alerting parents as to what is going on, what happened and what action it took. Or alert the parents when they need to physically take over for feeds or changing as i don't think its practical or really possible for the robot to do this. Thats becoming a bit more sci-fi.