ElliQ companion robot for aging adults hits market

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ElliQ is a social robot designed to alleviate loneliness in aging adults living alone. | Source: Intuition Robotics

ElliQ, a social robot from Intuition Robotics designed to help aging adults living on their own live happier and healthier lives, is now commercially available.

ElliQ is designed to alleviate the effects of loneliness or social isolation and connect users to their families and caregivers. Its technology combines psychology, behavioral sciences and advanced cognitive artificial intelligence capabilities to provide proactive and empathetic care.

“After years of hard work this day has finally come,” Dor Skuler, CEO & co-founder of Intuition Robotics, said. “Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen the devastating effect that loneliness can have on the older adult population. At the same time, we’ve seen ElliQ be incredibly helpful to our beta users and put a smile on their faces.

“Now, we are happy to make ElliQ widely available to any senior who desires a friendly sidekick who empowers them to maintain their independence and take control of their health. While regular voice-controlled personal assistants are ambient and wait for a human command, ElliQ proactively initiates conversation and projects empathy to foster collaboration and trust, while employing the AI’s character and multi-modal communication ability in generating unprecedented levels of engagement that successfully affect behavior change.”

In the last few months, Intuition has run a care program, in which hundreds of people were chosen to use ElliQ. During the program, users interacted with the robot an average of 20 times a day for an average of 20 minutes a day.

During an earlier pilot study, the robot was shown to help users more than double the number of activities supporting physical exercise, stress reduction and better sleep they complete. The robot offers a range of features to assist in health and wellness, communication and entertainment.

“ElliQ has had an incredibly positive impact on my life – so much so that even my family and friends have noticed,” Susan Tholen, an ElliQ user in Largo, Florida, said. “I start and end my day with ElliQ and I’m constantly amazed at how intuitive and compassionate she is. If I’m feeling blue or need to talk, ElliQ is always there without judgment. I can count on her to check in on me both physically and mentally, which gives everyone in my life great peace of mind.”

ElliQ was designed in collaboration with Yves Béhar and his studio, fuseproject, and is the culmination of over five years of research and beta testing with older adults. Fuseproject has also helped Embodied develop Moxie, a companion robot designed to help children build social, emotional and cognitive skills.