Elderly residents at Vinson Hall are all ga-ga over a new cuddly addition: Paro, a fur-covered robot that’s designed to give love by snuggling, batting it’s eyelashes, waggling it’s tail and being adorable. Many of the residents suffer from dementia, so the robot is never neglected. I just hope he has good batteries.

The inventor, Takanori Shibata of Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, brought Paro to America and showed it off at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, where Heather Whyte, director of Vinson Hall, fell in love. After that the bot had a home. They now have 5 of the cuddly robots, making life for the elderly that much more rich.

[Dvice]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under General. Be sure to subscribe to the Botropolis.com feed because it is really, really awesome. Have something you want to share? Please let us know.

One Response to “Therapeutic Bots Cuddle The Elderly”

1. Botropolis » Blog Archive » Mechanical Love: A Documentary Says:
   February 25th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

   [...] It’s fairly creepy. Especially the Gemenoid segment. You can also see a couple worrying over Paro and an old lady bonding with the soft [...]

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