Embodying care in Matilda - An affective communication robot for the elderly in Australia

Ageing population is at the center of the looming health care crisis in most parts of developed and developing world. Australia like most of the western world is bracing up for the looming ageing population crisis, spiraling health care costs and expected serious shortage of health care workers. Assistive Service robots and companion robots are being seen as one of the ways for supporting aged care facilities to meet this challenge and improve the quality of care of the elderly including mental and physical health outcomes, as well as support the health care workers in personalizing care. In this paper the authors report on design and first ever field trial of Matilda, a human like assistive communication (service and companion) robot in appearance and attributes (e.g., voice, expressions, gestures, emotions) in nursing homes in Australia. The work demonstrates Matilda's ability to break intergeneration technology barriers with elderly, engage elderly in group and one to one activities for improving personalization of care and wellbeing. Copyright © 2012 ACM.