ARI: the Social Assistive Robot and Companion

With the world population aging and the number of healthcare users with multiple chronic diseases increasing, healthcare is becoming more costly, and as such, the need to optimise both hospital and in-home care is of paramount importance. This paper reviews the challenges that the older people, people with mobility constraints, hospital patients and isolated healthcare users face, and how socially assistive robots can be used to help them. Related promising areas and limitations are highlighted. The main focus is placed on the newest PAL Robotics’ robot: ARI, a high-performance social robot and companion designed for a wide range of multi-modal expressive gestures, gaze and personalised behaviour, with great potential to become part of the healthcare community by applying powerful AI algorithms. ARI can be used to help administer first-care attention, providing emotional support to people who live in isolation, including the elderly population or healthcare users who are confined because of infectious diseases such as Covid-19. The ARI robot technical features and potential applications are introduced in this paper.