Embodying Care in Matilda: An Affective Communication Robot for Emotional Wellbeing of Older People in Australian Residential Care Facilities

Ageing population is at the center of the looming healthcare crisis in most parts of the developed and developing world. Australia, like most of the western world, is bracing up for the looming ageing population crisis, spiraling healthcare costs, and expected serious shortage of healthcare workers. Assistive service and companion (social) 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 older people including mental and physical health outcomes, as well as to support healthcare workers in personalizing care. In this article, the authors report on the design and implementation of first-ever field trials of Matilda, a human-like assistive communication (service and companion) robot for improving the emotional well-being of older people in three residential care facilities in Australia involving 70 participants. The research makes several unique contributions including Matilda’s ability to break technology barriers, positively engage older people in group and one-to-one activities, making these older people productive and useful, helping them become resilient and cope better through personalization of care, and finally providing them sensory enrichment through Matilda’s multimodal communication capabilities.