My Precious Friend: Human-Robot Interactions in Home Care for Socially Isolated Older Adults

Using a friendship framework, we explored interactions between a multi-functional companion robot and older adults residing in a low-resource community in South Korea.

We conducted in-depth interviews with 12 older adults who kept a doll-shaped companion robot called Hyodol for 18 months on average. We applied the Framework Analysis Method to explore three types of friendship (i.e., friendships of utility, pleasure, and the good) that participants cultivated with the robot.

The most common aspect of utility companionship reported by all participants was Hyodol's role as their health coach who reminded them to take medication and to exercise. Participants also found pleasure in playing with Hyodol and reported reduced feelings of loneliness. In the absence of other social supports, all participants also regarded Hyodol as a surrogate family member or human-friend, and interacted with Hyodol as such.

Findings illustrated high acceptability of Hyodol among these socially isolated older adults especially during the global COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that a humanoid like Hyodol could be complementary to homecare services for solo-living older adults.

Well-designed robot interventions, as complements to existing aging service and clinical interventions, have a potential to improve health behaviors among socially isolated older adults.