According to ZDNet, robots for the elderly were much discussed at the RoboNexus conference.

The next generation of domestic helper machines will be handling tasks ranging from cooking dinner to cleaning the litter box, which would allow elderly people with diminishing physical skills to live independently longer.

PALS Robotics, a Canadian start-up is developing robots for elder care.

The PALS–Personal Assistance Living System– voice-activated, two-armed “elderbot” would be able to store the groceries, help the senior out of the bathtub and prepare meals. This robotic assistant would delay the need to move its owner into a nursing facility and offer an alternative to in-home nursing care.

In the future, the company hopes that AI will also give the robots more humanlike interaction with people.

Los Angeles-based RoboDynamics has designed MILO robots for “telepresence,” allowing remote surveillance of a location via the robot’s video and audio sensor.

A Beta testers put a MILO in his grandfather’s home, where it acts as an interactive medical monitor.

“He sees Grandpa has been sleeping for what seems like a long time, and he knows to alert someone to check on him,” said Nikgohar.

But personal robots still have to overcome the “Frankenstein factor”, a distrust of humanoid machines. Such fears could be overcome thanks to some particular design principles, like the “Uncanny Valley” theory of robot anthropomorphism.

“It basically says people will accept a robot better if it looks somewhat like a human but not too much like a human,” said robotics psychiatrist Joanne Pransky. “If it looks too much like a human, that makes people nervous.”

Related entry: Life with robots.