Talk naturally
Ask for help by voice or text without learning a specialist interface.
Patricia
A personalised assistant for everyday life.
Patricia is being built so a person can ask for help in ordinary language, get practical assistance with approved tasks, and be remembered from one day to the next.
Remember what matters
Routines, people, preferences and what was said yesterday, so help has continuity rather than starting over each time.
Do useful work
Reminders, lists, messages, information and practical steps, through the device in hand or other approved channels.
Know when to stop
Escalate to a person when a request is unsafe, uncertain or outside the permitted scope.
Software first. Robots where they help.
Patricia is not waiting on a finished robot. It runs on a tablet, a phone or the web today, which is where early use and early research will happen.
Because the assistant is separate from any one body, the same Patricia can later drive a physical robot where movement, fetching or presence in a room adds something a screen cannot. Robot hardware is improving quickly, and keeping the software independent of it means the product does not depend on one supplier or one device.
That keeps the focus on the part people experience: whether the assistant is helpful, understandable and dependable in an everyday setting.
Initial scope
Patricia is intended for bounded, non-clinical assistance. It is not being presented as a medical device, an emergency service or a substitute for professional care, and a person is always able to take over.
Design principle: start with a task where success is observable, failure can be handled safely, and a person can take over.
An assistant should earn its place.
The goal is not a technology demonstration. It is repeatable help that people actually choose to keep using.