Robots Will Replace Your Friends - The "Futurama" of Life After Covid.
- Callum McAlpine
- Jun 4
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 17
Life as we know it has changed a lot since the beginning of the 2019 Covid pandemic: face-
shields at service counters, flexibility in working from home, and the increase in side-eyes
received when sneezing in public, to name a few. Although some of these measures may
seem arbitrary now, they were all designed to keep you physically safe.
But what about mentally safe? Most of us are very aware of the emotional and psychological
challenges that can come from rigorous lockdowns and rigid social distancing rules. It can be
isolating to relate to anyone from the confines of our homes or over 1.5 meters in a public
space. So where are the measures placed to protect our mental wellbeing?
That is where Alexander P. Henkel, Martina Caić, Marah Blaurock, and Mehment Okan enter
our story with their journal article Robotic transformative service research: deploying social
robots for consumer well-being during COVID-19 and beyond where they discuss the
implications of using robots to befriend service consumers to increase their quality of life and protect their mental health. A term they refer to as “social robots”.
Taken from their article, social robots “are physically embodied agents designed for assisting
and engaging in social integrations with humans in their everyday lives”. Think your very own
Bender from Futurama or C3PO from Star Wars (perhaps with more stable emotions and less
sass). Aldebaran United Robotics Group have created Pepper, a social robot that can interact
with humans by using face and body recognition to read emotion and a touch screen to engage in conversation. Taken from the Aldebaran website, Pepper is designed to “foster empathetic connections by understanding and responding to human emotions”, which is something Henkel et al. see as a solution to individuals struggling psychologically with societal changes since Covid.
Pepper is designed to “foster empathetic connections by understanding and
responding to human emotions.”
The way Pepper, and other social robots, are designed to help is by simulating social
interaction between the robot and an individual. Consider your Siri or Alexa tangible and
smiling. The target groups that Henkel et al. identifies as being the most vulnerable after Covid are children (non-adolescents before puberty) and older adults (people of 65 and older). But why these people? Well, these are the demographics that are most likely suffer mental health consequences through struggling to access resources in everyday life. These are groups of people that rely on others to care for and support them through life.
Henkel et al. throw two important words around in their journal article: hedonic and
eudaimonic. Although demonic to try spell and pronounce, these are two very important
concepts that researchers consider when assessing quality of life and the impacts of Covid-
19. Hedonic meaning “well-being is equated with pleasure and happiness” and eudaimonic
determining well-being as “self-realisation, mastery and environment and positive social
interactions”. “So, what do these needs have to do with Pepper, Bender and C3PO?” I hear
you ask. Funnily enough Pepper was designed to facilitate these needs independently in the
home, workplace or in education.
But Pepper isn’t the only humanoid being introduced into the service industry. German company Merck have developed Petra; a half-bodied robot head designed to conduct medical screenings in places like airports and train stations to alleviate the pressure placed on the medical field since the rise of Covid-19. Petra works like a conversation model of dialogue that asks her “patients” a series of questions to about their symptoms to narrow down potential causes of their ailments.
The City of Stockholm has already seen promising results with introducing social robots into
school classrooms to combat Sweden’s shortage of teachers and rising disengagement from
students. The team at Furhat Robotics are passionate about enhancing education, saying “rather than isolating students, having them stare at a book or a touch-screen, a social robot
gives them a physical, social, emotional interface to interact with”.
"A social robot gives them a physical, social, emotional interface to interact with."
Now, if you’re reading this article an assumption can be made that your interests are somewhat aligned with robots, the future and technology in general; and from that I will make an assumption that you’ve seen Ex Machina, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Robocop or even Blade Runner. So you’re probably thinking “all these robots sound a little too futuristic… what if they take over?” Well, my dear reader, these are important questions, but fear not. These social robots may bare similarities to those you have seen on the silver screen, there benefit comes from what they are programmed to do. The biggest use for social robots in this modern age are tutoring, companionship and customer engagement, and although these are all facets capable by humans, there are key components that these robots cannot replicate. Social robots may become your friend, but without empathy, emotion and reasoning, there is no chance of them replacing your loved ones.
References
Aldebaran United Robotics Group. 2022. Pepper. Aldebaran United Robotics Group.
Al Moubayed, Samer. 2024. A robot in every classroom: Furhat’s vision for education. Furhat
education/
Furhat. 2024. The 7 best use cases for social robots. Furhat Blog.
Furhat Robotics. 2019. “Meet PETRA: the world’s first health pre-screening robot.” Uploaded
March 12, 2019. YouTube video, 2:45min.
Henkel, Alexander P., Martina Caić, Marah Blaurock, and Mehmet Okan. 2020. “Robotic
transformative service research: deploying social robots for consumer well-being
during COVID-19 and beyond.” Journal of Service Management 31 No. 6, 2020:
1131-1148 DOI 10.1108/JOSM-05-2020-0145
Merck Group. Petra: The Potential of Medical Robots. Merck Science Space.
tomorrow/precision-medicine/petra.html
Wigmore, Ivy and, Dennis Shiao. 2024. What is a social robot? TechTarget Enterprise AI.
robot#:~:text=Advantages%20and%20disadvantages%20of%20social,which%20they
%20were%20not%20trained.
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