NEC has published this week a paper on a trial test they made late 2010 where they gave for a month a bunch of PaPeRo robots to some Japanese senior citizens.
The goal was here to check the impact of robot within this group of people, and apparently the result was pretty positive. Each little PaPeRo was set to match each senior citizen’s Hobbys and interests with information on local activities sourced via a wireless network connection, and then advice its owner of the latest interesting things to do.
Not only PaPeRo was warmly welcomed within this group of people but also the test demonstrates that they also tend to do more outside activities than before as well as being more open to society.