Social assistive robots in elderly care: Exploring the role of empathy

Abstract

The COVID-19 emergency has shown that elderly people living in Assisted Living Houses (ALHs) have been highly exposed to the virus. Besides health problems, during the social distancing restrictions, the elderly were also strongly affected by loneliness due to a lack of contact with their loved ones. Innovative solutions for ALH based on Social Assistive Robotics can reduce the risk of infection and, at the same time, improve the quality of life of elderly people. In this work, after a brief overview on the Pepper4Elderly project, we focus on the role of empathy and affective behaviors in human-robot interaction when the robot is used as a caring agent to assist and entertain the elderly guests of ALHs.