“Pepper isn’t your average seniors’ residence care worker. That was immediately evident when the diminutive robot arrived at the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care in Scarborough, Ont. to lead weekly exercises, call bingo numbers and take visitors’ temperatures during the pandemic. Less clear was whether staff – and more importantly, the senior centre’s residents – would embrace the mechanical person with large, round eyes and a tablet embedded in its chest. The robotics team at the University of Toronto (U of T) that built Pepper, alongside a fellow robot named Salt, certainly tried their best to design it to fit in. The robots have facial expressions and can gesture with their arms and head, says Goldie Nejat, Canada research chair in robots for society, who leads the U of T’s Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory.”
Read the full article by Joel Schlesinger in The Globe and Mail (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article-how-robots-can-make-aging-in-place-more-enjoyable/).