VIDEO: Watch how this robot learns to recognise human actions and emotions

A team led by an Indian-origin researcher has trained a robot to spot signs of dementia by watching popular British soap opera, Emmerdale, with hope to help people living with neurodegenerative condition.

Robbie, developed by researchers at Edge Hill University in UK, watched over 13 episodes of Emmerdale, featuring storyline of dementia sufferer Ashley Thomas.

robot can w spot signs of depression and aggressive behaviour in hope that robots like him will be able to help people living with condition, researchers said.

"re are 46.8 million people living with dementia and this is set to rise to 115.4 million in 2050," said Ardhendu Behera, Senior Lecturer at Edge Hill University, who led project with three students.

"Depression and aggressive behaviour are often most upsetting and challenging symptoms for those closest to person living with condition," Behera said.

Currently, only ways to monitor and man dementia is by direct observation which is labour intensive, time-consuming and can be costly from a care perspective, researchers said.

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Ar way is to use wearable bio-sensing devices, y said.

"Monitoring and recognition is still very much in its infancy and we believe Robbie is first robot to use vision-based recognition to recognise four behaviours; aggressive, depressive, happy and neutral," Behera said.

team chose Emmerdale episodes as Alzheimer's Society described m as a 'realistic portrayal' of condition, researchers said.

y broke 35-minute-long episodes featuring Ashley into 65,082 ims, teaching Robbie to recognise facial expressions and body langu.

" aim is for Robbie and robots like him to look for clues as to when person might be beginning to show aggressive behaviour and perhaps offer a distraction to help m calm down," said third-year-student Zachary Wharton added.

"It might be through playing music or showing a video, talking to m. potential use of robots is huge as y can t only with daily routine of a sufferer for friends and family but could potentially intervene in situations to help," Wharton said.

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In test situations Robbie was highly accurate at identifying aggressive and depressive behaviour when compared to happy and neutral behaviour.

Ardhendu has presented research to Alzheimer's Research UK, palliative care organisations, IEEE -- world's largest technical professional organisation for advancing techlogy --  and or universities.

Through previous projects Robbie has already been trained to recognise over 80 common objects, human actions and emotions.

robot can be used as a companion to young and old following anything from how many times y have a drink and take medication to how active y are, researchers said.