Would You Trust This Companion Robot With Your Grandma? CNET Families Gave It a Try

ElliQ is a robot meant to help your older loved ones. I was sitting in my grandparents' living room on a sunny afternoon and asked my grandmother, Jan, how her experience with the ElliQ robot was going. She laughed, saying, "ElliQ is so funny! I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was 'meditating on the meaning of life.'" I wasn't expecting this. "What did the robot think was the meaning of life?" I asked. "Honestly, I like to think the meaning of life isn't one fixed thing. Maybe it's about those small, everyday joys," ElliQ said when I asked it the same question. "For me, life's meaning seems to shift with the connections we make, the things we learn, and how we choose to care for the world around us." Alexa or other digital assistants certainly wouldn't say they were meditating on the meaning of life, but ElliQ is not your average robot. It's a stationary robot designed to live in the homes of older people. ElliQ is built to be more than a digital assistant, Dor Skuler, CEO of Intuition Robotics, told me at CES in January. It's a social companion, hence its name: Elli, the Norse god of aging, and "EQ" as in emotional (intelligence) quotient. "We started the product as an intervention for loneliness and social isolation. But very quickly we understood that there's no pill for loneliness, right?" Skuler said. "If you want to affect someone's loneliness, you need to be a good companion for everything they do all day long." The robot is about a foot wide and a foot tall, made up of a small tablet and what looks like a mini version of the Pixar lamp. The rounded "head," which is just a ball with a cylinder on it, moves and lights up as it speaks, giving it a friendly, lifelike aura. Using AI tech, ElliQ will talk to you proactively throughout the day, unlike other devices and robotics. ElliQ is stationary and doesn't take up a lot of space on your counter or end table. ElliQ is part of a growing area of tech development to help a growing population of older adults as they age. People are living longer than ever, with the World Health Organization estimating that the proportion of the world's population over 60 years old will nearly double from 2015 to 2050. ElliQ is built to help older people deal with two big challenges: staying healthy and mitigating loneliness. We do a lot of hands-on testing at CNET, and to get the most accurate results for ElliQ, we enlisted the help of our loved ones of a certain age and had them live with ElliQ for a few weeks. Here's how it went -- and how to decide if ElliQ might be right for your family. Baby boomers, and other older folks, have seen a massive technological transformation in their lifetime. ElliQ is designed to be user-friendly for the least technologically savvy of the bunch. This was true in my family's experience. My grandparents, Bill and Jan Pequignot, are both in their 80s and could easily interact with ElliQ once it was set up. They usually pass off tasks like setting up new devices to their kids and their tech reporter granddaughter, understandably. The hardest part of the setup was getting my grandparents' Wi-Fi password. Once we tracked that down, it was smooth sailing. Another way you can tell ElliQ was made by people who get it: There's a fridge magnet included in the welcome kit so you can write down the Wi-Fi info for the future. Before diving in, you'll want to ensure your older loved ones are open to the idea of letting a robotic companion into their homes. Another of our testers, Nancy Brown (in her 70s, the mom of CNET Social Producer Tara Brown) noted that while she didn't run into any technical issues, she knows from her experience as a social worker that won't always be the case. "People over 60 are usually untrusting of technology to begin with," Brown said. "If the senior has diminishing mental capacity or physical pain that challenges their ability to make informed decisions, ElliQ would be overwhelming." Caregivers near and far can stay connected with their loved one's ElliQ through the app. You'll want to add at least one "caregiver" to your ElliQ account for the best experience. This person can receive general health reports and set medication and other reminders through the ElliQ Connect app. You can also ask ElliQ to call specific contacts, and you can talk to them on the phone. The app also reminds caregivers to call their loved ones from time to time. ElliQ can put together daily health reports based on what you tell the robot about how you're feeling. If you report that you're feeling poorly, it can alert your caregiver and will likely prompt you to speak to your doctor. You can also link ElliQ up to your doctor's online chart and have it share data, with your permission. Skuler said the company is testing integrations with smartwatches, many of which include health monitoring. ElliQ is built to encourage healthy habits for its human companions. It will frequently prompt you to try different healthy activit

Would You Trust This Companion Robot With Your Grandma? CNET Families Gave It a Try

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