Coronavirus: Robots Bring Smiles to Care Homes

Robots are bringing smiles to the social care sector that’s been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

“I think it's fair to say that Covid has shone a pretty harsh light on the social care sector, says Dr. Cian O’Donovan, a research associate from the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL.

“It's exposed deep vulnerabilities on people who need it most. What can robotics do about this?”

In care homes, robots do things like clean up, decontaminate and help people put on socks. Others, like Stevie, are bringing laughter to residents.

“One of the challenges in any kind of an elder-care setting, is to try to increase social interaction,” says Conor McGinn, the CEO of Akara Robotics. “What Stevie did when we brought it into those environments was that it kind of brought people together. Typically, when you get people together, they're excited. They're likely to interact.”

McGinn says people liked that Stevie was cute. “They liked how it could express certain types of emotions. And they often found it funny . It kind of humanized the technology in a way.”

In another care home, robots are being used to help residents who are feeling isolated and lonely during the pandemic. “We have had pets, live pets in our facilities for years and years,” says Jean Morgan, Memory Care Manager at Ohio Living. “When you have a live pet, they tend to roam the unit and they tend to connect with just one or two rooms or people. But with the robot, multiple residents can use them.”

She says one of the communities has a black and orange-striped tiger cub which has become a really big hit. “The benefits that we've seen have just been outstanding, the loneliness and the irritability, anxiety, agitation. And so you can imagine that soft fur and that motion of petting is so soothing and calming that it really can benefit the residents from that standpoint.”

Morgan gave an example of a resident with dementia. “There is a sign or symptom that comes along with dementia often, and it's from aberrant motor behavior and that's defined as repetitive motion, like hitting or tapping or shaking a foot or even pacing around,” she explains. Instead of the tapping, the resident was able to take that repetitive motion and use it into stroking the cat's fur. The stroking decreased the resident’s anxiety and before long, she was making eye contact with the cat. “She was talking about a cat that she had had in her past, which we had never heard about before,” says Morgan.

“Are robots here to stay in our homes?” asks McGinn. “Well, yes. They have a big part to play in providing resilience and robustness against Covid and against future issues.”

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