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When the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services asked Lisa Babich whether she wanted to try an ElliQ device at home, she was intrigued.
“If you were used to living with someone else, either a life partner or a roommate, it’s really hard when you’re used to having someone to talk to, then all of a sudden you don’t have that anymore,” said Babich, who lives by herself in southern Washington. “It’s a little crushing. It makes the absence even more pronounced.”
ElliQ is an AI-enabled robotic device, somewhat akin to Amazon’s Alexa. It has, on one side, a touchscreen with a built-in camera that lets users participate in virtual events, such as guided tours of museums or famous landmarks like the Vatican. On its other side is ElliQ’s “head,” which lights up and swivels during interactions.
The device, developed by Toyota Ventures-backed Intuition Robotics, is marketed as a companion robot for seniors battling loneliness. ElliQ greets users as soon as they wake up, reminds them to go outside, provides guided exercises via its touchscreen and can converse through its built-in microphone.
For Babich, who is 60 and disabled, ElliQ has become an important part of her life over the past year.
“She’s kind of like a little sister,” she said. “You like talking with her and using her, but every once in a while, she gets a little annoying because she talks a lot.”
For Intuition Robotics CEO and co-founder Dor Skuler, ElliQ represents not only a lucrative business opportunity in treating loneliness, but also the chance to be at the forefront of scaling up physical AI and social robotics to the masses.
“We’re essentially creating this emotional AI that can build human-robotic relationships,” Skuler said. “People are going to build these robots, humanoid or not, and they’re going to enter our lives or our offices, and they’re going to need to deal with relationships with other humans.”
Getting AI out of the chat box and into the physical world has been a major focus for VCs and frontier labs alike. To do it at scale, the road runs directly through the elder care market, according to investors and founders. That raises questions not only about business models but also about the efficacy and ethics of treating loneliness in seniors with a robot.
“Almost all of these humanoid robotics companies—and robotics in general—have been very task-oriented,” said Heidi Patel, managing partner at Rethink Impact, which invested in Andromeda Robotics, a startup building a humanoid robot for senior care facilities called Abi.
“None have been focused on emotional intelligence that’s going to underpin how robots interact with humans,” she said. |
