Social Robots and Virtual Humans as Assistive Tools for Improving Our Quality of Life

Growing numbers of aging people result in great demand for social robots and virtual humans to support health care and independent life for a long time at home. We provide an overview of various actual potential applications at home in the literature concerning social robots and virtual humans. In addition, we report our latest research progress in our institute, i.e., Social communication, falling-down detection, affect computing, attention capture. All the research and applications demonstrate that the social robots and virtual humans can provide a better daily life in home environment.