Elders finding love in a household machine

Until recently, Dorothy Light of West Lafayette, Ind., described herself as a 74-year-old lonely widow. She had said goodbye to her home and even her cat when she moved into a senior apartment building that doesn't allow pets.

But she's not lonely anymore, Light said, thanks to a new live-in companion that makes her feel loved. Never mind that her companion isn't capable of love, since it's just a robot that looks like a dog. What matters in her opinion is that loving feeling she gets when Big Boy sits in her lap or nuzzles beneath her arm.

''I had lost my identity" with no husband, pets, or children at home to nurture, she said.

The AIBO from Sony ''gives me a sense of identity," Light said. ''The dog loves me all the time. . . . It gives me an entrée into a world I had thought I'd lost forever."

Light got Big Boy from Purdue University, one of several institutions studying how elders interact with robotic pets. With nursing homes experiencing labor shortages and with the over-65 population projected to double by 2050, scientists are asking whether machines designed to seem sentient could provide a low-maintenance means of improving the emotional lives of seniors.

Some researchers are hopeful. A study completed last year at Purdue found that ''life satisfaction" scores improved in six out of 10 categories among 13 elders who had kept an AIBO in their apartments six weeks.

At Teikyo University of Science and Technology in Japan, researchers in ''robot-assisted therapy" have found that robotic pets in nursing homes stir positive memories of pets that residents once owned. Researchers from MIT found that nursing home residents would rather play with robots than dolls, because robots seem valued as grown-up activity.

But the semblance of sentience in these therapeutic robots has raised ethical questions. Is it right for anyone who feels desperately lonely or depressed to gain relief in an illusion? Would it be fair to use robots, which appear to have feelings, among elders with dementia who might think they're dealing with a real animal?

Alan Beck, lead researcher in the Purdue study, said he feels no misgivings when using the robots among elders who are mentally competent and who let themselves imagine that the machine has feelings. ''It's a suspension of disbelief," he said.

''We all do that," as when watching a movie with full awareness that the actors aren't really falling in love or risking their lives, Beck said. ''It allows us to have the whole emotional experience."

Others have concerns. Human beings are ''cheap dates," vulnerable to being smitten by machines that seem to express emotions, according to Sherry Turkle, director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at MIT. Among the elderly, she said, that vulnerability is exploited when machines substitute for much-needed human interaction.

''If all the robot does is take old people and give them the feeling there's somebody home [inside the robot], when really there's nobody home, I think that's not good," Turkle said. ''We're setting up a situation that's based upon a fundamental deception. Would you like to be talking to something that really doesn't understand you?"

Ethical or not, seemingly sentient robots are proliferating. Sony's now-discontinued AIBO is being replaced by others, such as a high-end seal named Paro. It waddles on flippers and learns to respond to a human voice.

Simpler technologies, such as the Furby and My Real Baby, originally retailed in children's markets for $35 to $100. But elders seem to love them.

One nursing home bought a bunch of My Real Babies on eBay after participating in an MIT study and finding that residents became emotionally attached to them.

Hastening the trend are indications that elders benefit from contact with real animals. It's increasingly common for facilities striving to create a homelike environment to bring in real dogs, cats, and fish for institutionalized elders, according to Susan Feeney, spokeswoman for the American Health Care Association, which represents service providers to the elderly and disabled.

''They might not interact well with other patients or staff because of dementia, but they can have a pet in their lap and pet it," Feeney said. ''That's very comforting to them."

On one level, robotic pets seem even better than real animals for many settings. They need outlets to charge up, but they don't shed, bark, trigger allergies, or require attentive care.

With so many advantages, Turkle said she worries that ''robots will become part of a treatment plan that legitimates that there simply aren't enough resources in these facilities," including inadequate staffing.

But if robots simply serve as conversation starters, she said, then they might serve a critical role in helping elders connect with real people.

A robot ''is a kind of communication tool," Akimitsu Yokayama wrote via e-mail from Teikyo University, where he has been studying robot-related therapies for six years. ''If we want to make the [elderly] talk to other people, using the robot is a very interesting trial."

Dorothy Light has found that her robot is indeed a party maker. She often brings Big Boy into the hallway of her apartment building, where it draws a talkative crowd, eager for a performance.

The experience is usually more fun for her than for Big Boy, which showed its introverted nature at a New Year's Eve party. ''He was very upset," Light said. ''He sat and cowered in the corner."

Such bonds between elders and their robot pets are common, Beck said, so much so that several wanted to keep them when the six-week study ended. They seemed to remember they were dealing with a machine, but seemed pleasantly prone to forget at times.

''I even talk to him when he's turned off," one study participant wrote in her journal. ''Isn't that silly?"