Social RoboticsTalking to Pepper eased stress and loneliness for unpaid carers
A Cambridge-led five-week study found carers opened up more to the robot over time.
Informal caregivers, from parents of disabled children to older people caring for partners with dementia, held twice-weekly conversations with a remotely operated Pepper robot. Over five weeks they reported better mood, less loneliness and stress, and found the robot increasingly comforting, speaking for longer and more freely as sessions went on. The study, led by Guy Laban at the University of Cambridge and published in the International Journal of Social Robotics, also found improvements in emotion regulation. It points to social robots as a low-pressure outlet for a group that often has little support of its own.
This archive entry summarises reporting published elsewhere; follow the source link for the full story. The summary was drafted with AI from that reporting.