As the median age of Americans rises and more elderly citizens require extra care, extra caregivers will be required. While it's likely that many Americans will step up to the plate and help care for the elderly, they won't be able to fulfill all of their needs. This inability has inspired some engineers to figure out how robots could be used to care for the elderly. Some have proposed using Baymax-esque robots to help care and move patients from place to place. However, one group of engineers is looking into how robots could provide company for patients.
Slate Magazine's Future Tech recently discovered a study from the Journal of Gerontological Nursing that explored how a series of small robots could provide emotional and physical company for geriatric patients who suffer from dementia. In the study, a series of Australian and German nurses gave patients a small seal-shaped robot called Paro designed to respond to sound, light and heat as well as express emotions. The robots also have the ability to adapt to a user's preference. Paro is more likely to repeat an action if the user pets him after he does it, as well as stop performing other actions if the user hits it.
In order to determine how effective the robots were, the study used a variety of data points to track happiness. In the end, the study determined that "a positive, clinically meaningful influence on quality of life, increased levels of pleasure and also reduced displays of anxiety."
This data isn't surprising, since retirement homes have used pets in the past to keep patients content. While some may have reservations about using inanimate objects to replace living beings, Upstate University's Chief of geriatrics Sharon Brangman told Slate that "I think this offers the very interesting alternative of a pet surrogate....I always have concerns about substituting inanimate objects for the real thing, but in this case, since it's something that isn't really assessing or evaluating the individual and really just providing some measure of comfort, I think it could be a suitable alternative."
While robots like this could easily be implemented in retirement homes and hospitals, the study's author also believe that the Paro could be effectively implemented at home.
