I. Introduction
The need of care for older adults is increasing, and supporting ways have to be found for human caregivers. One solution could be provided by robotics. So far, several research prototypes have been developed, e.g. [1]–[4]. Social robots, however, have hardly left living lab contexts and been introduced to real user homes. This paper presents first results of a long-term field trial in real private homes with prototype 2 (PT2) of an autonomous mobile social service robot called HOBBIT (see Fig. 1). Its main goal was to provide a feeling of safety (e.g. by fall detection) and to support the users in some tasks of daily living (e.g. pick-up objects from the floor/fall detection). We present answers to research questions on how seniors experienced the natural interaction with the autonomous robot in their private homes in terms of usability, utility, support of their independent living, and their feelings of safety.