Interactive multimodal social robot for improving quality of care of elderly in Australian nursing homes

This paper describes the design of multimodal robotic system, embodiment of multimodal interaction (voice, gestures, emotion, touch panel and dance) in assistive social robot (Matilda) for modeling group based and one-to-one interactions with technology adverse elderly in nursing homes. It describes the human-centered evaluation of Matilda based on quality, naturalness, user satisfaction and predictive accuracy based on first ever field trials in Australia. The multimodal social robots have facilitated breaking the technology barriers with the elderly leading to several aged care facilities and community centers showing interest in future trials. © 2012 ACM.