In this video clip from "The Virtual Opportunities Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on May 31, Fool.com contributors Jose Najarro, Rachel Warren, and Travis Hoium discuss a unique pilot program in New York that involves a cute looking robot that provides companionship for the elderly.
Jose Najarro: There is a robot called ElliQ. The state of New York will distribute this robot. The purpose of this robot is a form of companionship. They're trying to distribute it to homes of more than 800 older adults. The main reason they're doing this is because studies have suggested that long-term loneliness, especially as you get older, becomes important. If you're pretty lonely, it starts to affect your mental and health issues.
There have been some studies that suggest that it's almost as bad as smoking. These robot companions are pretty cool. Their main purpose is just to engage in small talk or help contacting, keeping up with the news, or keeping up with some form of health or exercise or some form of meditation. It's pretty much just a companion robot.
Let me share my screen real quick so we can see the image of the robot. A lot of people discuss it very Pixar-like. It has a body. Then this is the face real quick. Whenever the robot talks, it moves that head. It looks like it's either talking to you indirectly. The light also blinks. Again, this is more of just companionship for right now the older base.
But I think it's just cool to see how robotics is not just to do manual labor or stuff. It can also help in some form of health benefits, one way or another. It's pretty early stages that the company that made these robots is Israeli based, but they're testing out with about 800 robots right now. I'm going to see how that goes in the future.
Rachel Warren: I find this very interesting and it is funny that Pixar was literally the first thing that came to mind when you mentioned the story because it does seem like something that you might see in a Pixar film. One of the things that stuck out to me from the article as well was they were saying an estimated 14 million Americans over the age of 65 currently live alone. That's going to be increasing as the boomer generation ages.
Obviously, I think this is a little bit controversial and it'll be interesting to see. I know it's an experiment. As you mentioned, how this works if this is something that we see in other states. Because there could be potentially a lot of great use cases here to provide maybe some companionship and feedback for older adults.
But there's also the argument of, oh well, that could potentially also dehumanize people and where is the importance of the human interaction component. It's really interesting. You think of it, could it be something where, for example, how some older individuals like my grandparents would do this, would wear the little life alert pendants. Could there be potentially an element to robots like this where they could speak to the robot and they could get a call for help to 9-1-1, for example, if they needed emergency medical services or to a care aid.
It's interesting to think what some of the use cases are. I'm curious to see how this will play out, but I do like to see that there are broader, very beneficial use cases beyond some of the futuristic stuff that we talked about that maybe hasn't quite deployed yet. This is interesting.
Travis Hoium: The biggest question I have is, can technology solve problems like this?
Warren: Yeah.
Hoium: I think this is where you go, maybe. But what's the limit? What's the benefit? I think what you're saying is right. There's probably activities or reminders to take medication and things like that there can be a lot of value add. Is a robot going to replace people, or pets, or things like that? I have a lot more skepticism on that, but we'll see where this plays out. It's definitely worth trying something like this, especially on a small-scale pilot like this.
