Emotional Support Domestic Robots for Healthy Older Adults: Conversational Prototypes to Help With Loneliness

A burgeoning area of HRI explores how robots can be used to assist older adults who are dealing with health issues. However, much of this work focuses on aiding older adults that are living with dementia or other serious health-related problems. In this work, we focus on robots helping otherwise-healthy older adults living with social isolation and loneliness. We created an initial robot behavior design, which leverages techniques from therapy, to provide emotional support through basic conversational ability.