One of the worst locations for serious Covid infections has been senior care facilities, nursing homes, and the like. We send robots into areas dangerous for humans to go, and currently that includes places for senior care. Robots could be delivering meals and meds to seniors quarantined and isolated during the pandemic, and not just seniors, as many of us would appreciate a non human interaction for home deliveries of all kinds, if possible.
This article from VOX is about robots delivering something we call “care” for seniors, which has emotional components we are still not that familiar with coming from man/ robot interaction. Of course we have seen multitudes of movies showing futuristic AI interactions.
Likely a foreshadowing of telemedicine components as well, such as the role Doctors play in “emotional healing”. Boomers can probably still recall a time as children, when doctors made house calls, and there’s research that documents that “certain something” beyond diagnosis and treatment that Doctors provided in person.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Are-robots-the-answer-to-pandemic-loneliness-—-or-a-moral-trap-Vox.pdf”]