Does a robot companion for elderly people need to understand emotions? Adeline Chanseau 1 and Katrin S. Lohan 2 Abstract— This paper studies how a robot companion can give an emotional support to elderly people. This study is divided in two parts, the first one explores what the degree of acceptation and expectations are towards a robot companion, and the second part researches how emotions are perceived. The survey suggested that emo- tions are perceived differently according to individuals. It could be argue that the low number of participants did not allow any correlations however it could also be argued that culture is not enough to induce a norm in emotions and that it is something very personal. I. INTRODUCTION According to the office for National Statistics 2012, more than 22% of the British population will be over 65 [10]. Therefore old people will need to be taking care of. Brown [2] claims that more people expect to be able to have a robot companion, probably due to the presence of technology in our everyday life. Therefore a robot companion could be an answer for elderly. This study is focused on how old people can benefit emotionally from having a robot companion to interact with. Robot meant for interaction can be classified in four sections: ’socially evocative, social interface, socially receptive and sociable’ [1]. The aim of the project is to produce a robot that belongs to the fourth category, meaning one that is capable of reacting on its own. The robot that will be used for the experiment is the robot (cf fig1) that was used for the LIREC project composed of an EMYS head which is highly expressive and has cartoon-like feature [6]. This choice is justified by the fact that it represents a reasonably good balance between a humanoid head and a mechanoid head which can avoid the ”uncanny valley”[8]. The main focus of the study is to see if there is a correlation between the way the robot acts like an old 1 Adeline Chanseau is an MSc student in the Engineering and Physical Sciences and Mathematical And Computer Science de- partments ac300@hw.ac.uk 2 Katrin S. Lohan is a lecturer in the Mathematical And Computer Science department K.Lohan@hw.ac.uk Fig. 1. Robot used to express emotions person and the acceptance and likeliness of the robot among seniors. Here the acting of the robot is defined by the motion of facial expressions. The motions were slowed down to an elderly pace. II. EXPERIMENT Some positive correlations between the way the robot shows emotions and the acceptance and likeliness of the robot are expected as an outcome of this study. Further studies will need to be done to get tangible proof, however this project can already make this correlation with old people. A. Survey Many factors can influence the likeliness of a robot companion: personality, technology awareness, com- panion expectations. The first part of the questionnaire