IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 22

Leading Edge
research and these products successfully entering
the market. Recent innovations in natural language
processing, hardware speed and miniaturization,
and artificial intelligence have allowed the field to
advance quickly. Other work has enabled individuals
to interact in group therapy sessions where robots
engage through a variety of group-based interactive
activities including riddles, solving simple mathematical
problems, and even sing-alongs [2]-[5].
Other teams have developed robotic applications
capable of telling a story to the user, or uploading
images to the robot and telling the story associated
with the photograph [6]. Additionally, robots are
being used in care facilities in common group areas
to facilitate conversations among residents and even
lead physical therapy sessions [2], [7], [8].
Building off this progress, we are investigating
how robots can provide companionship for older
adults. We plan to combat isolation with low-cost,
accessible, and portable social robots such as Misty
from MistyRobotics. This more affordable alternative
is advantageous for individuals from different socioeconomic
backgrounds to enable the same care
level that may not be available to them with another
robotic platform. Our experimental studies are leveraging
the Wizard of Oz design, which allows us to control
the robot from behind the scenes, while giving the
impression that the robot is fully functional. Such a
method is enabling us to test reciprocal interactive
conversational strategies including depth of interactivity
and non-verbal social cues to better inform
developers of desired functionality in social robots.
The Wizard of Oz approach is advantageous because
it enables faster innovations through validation with
minimal development and costs. We hope that this
work will lay the groundwork for the next-generation
social robots capable of useful and desirable social
interactions, especially for older adults who may find
themselves aging in different locations from year to
year depending on their health and other factors.
Our research is well positioned to address isolation
and depression among older adults, and potentially,
individuals of any age suffering from isolation.
Our aim is to scale this effort to smart homes, and
even beyond: to smart cities. We imagine social
robots being constant companions, following older
adults across locations, for example, from home to
long-term care facilities. Hospitals could place social
robots inside rooms for individuals who require longterm
stays and do not have many visitors.
22
the aforementioned applications could have
been beneficial during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Older adults living inside care facilities were shut out
entirely from visitors outside of the care staff; even
isolated from other residents in many cases. Socially
assistive robots could have been deployed to seniors
in these situations, allowing them to maintain
interaction with someone they view as companions.
As social robotics progresses as a field, our hope is
that social robots will be ready to assist as veridical,
welcoming companions during future pandemics
where individuals must distance and isolate for long
periods of time.

Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the Zimin
Institute at Arizona State University, in part by the
National Science Foundation under Grant 1828010,
and in part by The Global KAITEKI Center at Arizona
State University. The views expressed are
those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
those of the Zimin Institute, the National Science
Foundation (NSF), or The Global KAITEKI
Center (TGKC).
 References
[1] K. E. Skouby et al., " Smart cities and the ageing population, "
Wireless World Res. Forum, no. 12, pp. 1-12, 2014.
[2] F. Martín et al., " Robots in therapy for dementia
patients, " J. Phys. Agents, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 48-55, 2013,
doi: 10.14198/jopha.2013.7.1.07.
[3] A. Tapus, " Improving the quality of life of people
with dementia through the use of socially assistive
robots, " in Proc. Adv. Technol. Enhanced Qual.
Life (AT-EQUAL), 2009, pp. 81-86, doi: 10.1109/
AT-EQUAL.2009.26.
[4] M.-T. Chu et al., " Service innovation through social
robot engagement to improve dementia care quality, "
Assistive Technol., vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 8-18, 2017, doi:
10.1080/10400435.2016.1171807.
[5] S. Mohammad et al., " Service innovation using social
robot to reduce social vulnerability among older
people in residential care facilities, " Forecasting
Social Change, vol. 113, pp. 438-453, Dec. 2016, doi:
10.1016/j.techfore.2016.07.009.
[6] H. Abdollahi et al., " A pilot study on using an intelligent
life-like robot as a companion for elderly individuals
with dementia and depression, " in Proc. IEEE-RAS Int.
Conf. Humanoid Robots, Nov. 2017, pp. 541-546, doi:
10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2017.8246925.
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

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