Enhancing Emotional Well Being of Elderly Using Assistive Social Robots in Australia

Abstract

Emotional well being is one of two aspects of personal well-being that can be measured in quality of life assessments, and is a critical part of a senior citizen to help them age gracefully and remain independent as well as integrated with society. In order to improve the emotional well being of the elderly in the era of looming ageing population crisis, in this paper the authors report on design and a field trial of Matilda, a human-like assistive communication assistive robot in Australian residential care and home-based care facilities. The work demonstrates that by marrying the embodiment of care with artificial intelligence, emotion measuring techniques and positive emotion generation in its design and applications, Matilda has the ability to improve emotional well being of the elderly.