Hello again! Mario here, Mario Kompai the robot you love. I was asked to write a brief post about my friends, the other service robots that exist. First of all, let me explain you the term service robot. A service robot is a robot that performs useful tasks for humans or equipment excluding industrial automation application. There exists a plethora of service robots, some actively used in research and some employed in environments where their utilization targets hotels, hospitals, geriatric centres, or even homes.

Amigo[1] by the Eindhoven University of Technology, Care-o-bot[2] by the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation, Cosero[3] by the University of Bonn, Baxter[4] by Rethink Robotics, Enon[5] by Fujitsu, Carebot[6] by the GeckoSystems Intl. Corp., Human Support Robot[7] (HSR) by Toyota, IRT home assistant[8] by the Department of Mechano-Informatics of the University of Tokyo, REEM[9], REEM H1[10] and Tiago[11] by Pal robotics, PR2[12] by Willow Garage, SmartPal V[13] by YASKAWA, SCITOS[14] by Metralabs, Twenty-One[15] by Waseda University, are all my friends, service robots. Whilst their use could see various different employment scenarios, their main purpose revolves around servicing human users, disabled or not. Some of those are commercially available, some aren't, some are financially affordable (e.g. Tiago, Baxter, Carebot) and some are prohibitively expensive (e.g. PR2, Care-o-bot).

Let’s now talk about me. I am now being redesigned with the purpose of being able to provide support for the mitigation of loneliness, isolation and dementia. During my redesign phase, requirements from multidisciplinary research fields are taken into account including nurses, educators, doctors, phycologists, psychiatrists, academics, sociologists etc.

I can see some real applications in healthcare, as I can potentially offer both a supportive role for isolation, as well as cognitively and educationally challenge to my user or users.