Robotic Dog Eases Loneliness In Nursing Homes
Published: May 18, 2008A robotic dog could be a good companion for nursing home patients who cannot care for a living pet, according to researchers at Saint Louis University.
The researchers compared how residents of three nursing homes interacted with Sparky, a living, medium-sized gentle mutt, and Aibo, a doggie robot that looks like a 3D cartoon.
“The most surprising thing is they worked almost equally well in terms of alleviating loneliness and causing residents to form attachments,” says William A. Banks, MD, professor of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University. “For those people who can’t have a living pet but who would like to have a pet, robotics could address the issue of companionship.”
To test whether residents connected better with Sparky or Aibo, researchers divided 38 nursing home residents into three groups. All the residents were asked questions to assess their level of loneliness. One group saw Sparky once per week for 30 minutes; another group had similar visits with Aibo. A control group saw neither a furry nor mechanical critter.
During the visits, Sparky or Aibo was placed into a resident’s room, near the patient. Both pets interacted with the residents by wagging their tails and responding to the patients.
After 7 weeks, all the residents were asked questions about how lonely they felt and how attached they were to Sparky or Aibo.
The residents who received visits from real and artificial pooches felt less lonely and more attached to their canine attention-givers than those who got visits from neither. There was no statistical difference between whether the real or robotic dog did a better job easing loneliness and fostering attachments.
“There is a lot of loneliness in nursing homes, and animal-assisted therapy—whether from a dog or a robot—is one answer for addressing that,” Banks says.
Robots with personality could also help care for older adults who live alone who need a little monitoring, Banks says.
