Lucid AI
ambient prediction of dementia sundowning
fig. 1. clock face drawn at half past four, the sundowning hour.
Catalog of Work · R. Poudel, Collector · Lawrence, Kansas
Lucid AI
ambient prediction of dementia sundowning
- Collected
- DevFest WashU, 2026
- Locality
- St. Louis, MO
- Collectors
- R. Poudel et al.
- Method
- hackathon, weekend build
- Substrate
- Next.js · Firebase · Gemini API · ElevenLabs · Twilio
- Status
- exhibited
Field Notes
Sundowning, the late-afternoon agitation common in dementia, usually catches caregivers off guard. The episodes have leading indicators in speech and ambient sound, but no human can monitor for them continuously. That is a machine's job.
Lucid listens ambiently and runs continuous audio analysis through Gemini 1.5 Pro, looking for the early signatures of an episode. When the model's confidence shifts, state changes stream to a caregiver dashboard in real time. The goal is a 20 to 40 minute head start: enough time to adjust the environment, redirect, or simply be present before distress peaks.
Two more pieces round it out. Daily cognitive assessments (clock drawing and word recall) are scored by Gemini Vision against an eight-week personal baseline, so decline is measured against the person rather than a population average. And the companion speaks in a familiar family voice cloned with ElevenLabs, because a known voice de-escalates where a synthetic one can agitate.
Dissection
A Next.js app with Firebase as the real-time backbone. Gemini handles both continuous audio interpretation and vision-based scoring of cognitive assessments; ElevenLabs and Twilio handle the human-facing outputs.
- Continuous audio pipeline
- Streams ambient audio through Gemini 1.5 Pro for state classification; emits sundowning-risk state changes 20 to 40 minutes ahead of predicted onset.
- Caregiver dashboard (Next.js + Firebase)
- Real-time view of current state, risk trajectory, and assessment history. Firebase pushes state transitions to the dashboard instantly.
- Cognitive assessment scoring
- Daily clock-drawing and word-recall tasks scored with Gemini Vision against an 8-week rolling personal baseline.
- Voice companion (ElevenLabs + Twilio)
- Delivers personalized companion responses in cloned family voices; Twilio handles outbound alerts to caregivers.
Annotations
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