PALS | Devpost

PALS (Pharmaceutical Aiding Logical Software) Logo
Top View
Side view, showing the wheels
Mechanics of PALS

THIS IS A BEGINNER PROJECT.

Oftentimes, in our lives, we become ill, and are unable to take care of ourselves. One of our members, Aalaa, has a grandmother that is currently experiencing this. Due to her loss in memory, she finds herself unable to remember when to take medicine, what type of medicine to take, and how much of it to take. Another problem is that because of this, you feel as if you're a burden on the people who take care of you; and sometimes the pressure becomes a lot for them, too. However, Aalaa talked to her partner Khadija, and they realized they could solve this with AI. They could create a robot, that brings you medicine, tells you how much you need, and makes sure that you don't take the wrong kind. It was a friend who you could rely on-- it was PALS.

PALS stands for Pharmaceutical Aiding Logical Software. Through a software that scans medicine, it is able to make sure you take it safely. It is primarily aimed towards users who are visually and physically impaired. PALS is aimed to be able to move around freely, and give people medicine without disrupting their day to day life.

For the software portion of PALS, we used “Google’s Teachable Machine” to train and store the algorithm and images. We transferred the link to a JS boilerplate and modified the HTML and JS to suit our project. After that, we built the robot portion out of cardboard. We used an Arduino circuit to control the wheels and make them go a certain number of paces. We used a 3D printer for the wheels and the Arduino IDE to connect the Arduino to a computer.

Currently, PALS is unable to give auditory prompts, but we aim to rectify that. The submission for the competition is simply the minimum viable product, due to the time limit. In the near future, we hope to add speakers, and we would also like to improve the mobility of the robot so as to let it travel in any direction quickly, as well as give it a way to continuously learn from it's surroundings. We one day aim to be used in partnership with pharmacies, so we may be able to get set schedules for people and their medicine.