Older adults perspective and emotional respond on robot interaction

As of 1 January 2016, the population of Malaysia was estimated to be 30 572 466 people. Between 2010 and 2040, Malaysians aged 60 years and above are projected to increase more than three folds of the 2010 population. The older adults who stay alone will feel so lonely and no longer have social lives like they used to be when they were younger. A robot is introduced in the life of the older adults to emulate feeling of closeness to their children or their friend. The robot becomes their friend to make them feel happy. Past research has highlighted the importance of emotion and social characteristics as human attribute to machine as a result from machine behaviour. Nevertheless, no study was done focusing on the eastern culture, such as from the perspective of Malay ethnicity, where similar concern exists in emotion, social characteristic, and robot with aging population. Hence, this paper report an investigation for robot interaction to help older adults who are lonely to have a better Quality of Live (QoL). There were 12 older adults involved in this research to determine response of the older adults towards robot interaction. The method used was interview with 2 caregivers for care house information and questionnaire to 12 older adults aged 60 years old and above. The questionnaire is based on older adults perception after watch a different video of robot. Result from the questionnaire shows that most of the older adults agree that robot can be their companion in daily lives and help reduce their loneliness. This study also found that majority of the older adults preferred humanoid robot instead of pet robot. This found will be used for the next objective with a real robot. The result provides insights of the benefit use of robot in the older adults lives to stimulate positive emotion for a better QoL.