“You’re bloody lovely ain’t you,” said Frances Barrett, as the robotic cat she was stroking flicked its ears and whiskers one lunchtime this week at the Oak Manor care home in Bedfordshire.
The resident was one of several who live with dementia playing with the home’s small menagerie of animatronic animals that were originally designed to entertain American girls aged four to eight but have found a growing market in British care homes.
At the other end of the table, Majorie Stephenson tickled her “cat” under its chin, laughed as she scooped it up in her arms and announced: “I’m going to take him home with me and take him for a walk every day.”
The cats, which purr and miaow, seemed more popular than the dogs, which bark along if spoken to. To complete the scene, a pair of plastic song birds twittered away as Sheila Brinkley, another resident, pursed her lips and whistled happily into their beaks.
The residents didn’t appear to believe they were real animals, but neither did they consider them silly toys. While some ignored them, many instinctively engaged with their moving features, wagging tails and “bark back” and “vibrapurr” technologies.
An eight-month trial of similar pets in eight Cornish care homes last year found positive effects, although things didn’t always end well for the pets. One was found with broken limbs (cause unknown), another was dropped in urine and a handful malfunctioned. And a quarter of residents didn’t interact with them at all.
The effect of the £100 animals on residents with dementia, especially when they are distressed, was “almost magical”, said Lydia Endersby, Oak Manor’s activities coordinator. They have become another tool to help the care workers avoid medicating residents who are struggling.
It is not the first time care homes have experimented with robots. With mixed results, Japan has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in developing potential devices such as Hug, a lifting robot; Paro, a robotic seal; and Pepper, a “lovable” humanoid robot. In 2021 it was reported that production of Pepper had been halted.
The 64-bed Befordshire care home started with a couple of the pets and now has 10. About 100,000 have been sold in the UK and EU, according to Ageless Innovation, the manufacturer that was spun out of the US toy giant Hasbro, maker of Nerf guns and My Little Pony.
Research in care homes using the pets by Plymouth University found decreased neuropsychiatric symptoms such as delusions, depression, anxiety, elation, apathy and occupational disruptiveness for residents with robot pets.
The innovation comes amid predictions that 135 million people worldwide might be affected by dementia by mid-century and more than 1.6 million in the UK alone – up from about 900,000 today. New ways to alleviate suffering from such brain diseases are urgently needed.
Ted Fischer, the chief executive of Ageless Innovation, said the idea was born when it emerged that about 20% of the reviews for Hasbro’s animatronic pets for children were coming from people buying them for elderly relatives.
“There was an increasing desire for older adults to have more fun, play and joy and this need for more companionship caused by this epidemic of loneliness even before the pandemic,” Fischer said.
If the user makes a short noise towards the dog they get a short bark in return, while if they talk for longer the dog makes a longer noise. If you stroke its back it triggers a subtle heartbeat in its chest and you can splay its front legs to cuddle it chest-to-chest.
“It will act like a puppy as long as you interact with it like a puppy, but it will also really calm down [if you do]”, he said.
The cat is programmed with more “random play patterns”, reflecting cats’ independence.
The Plymouth researchers found that people with moderate or severe dementia and those considered to be lonely were most likely to interact with the pets.
Residents “cared for and nurtured robots, which perhaps provided a sense of responsibility and purpose”, the academics found.
“Although most nurturing seemed to involve cuddling and fussing the animals, there were also [reports of] residents feeding, dressing, and grooming the pets,” they added.
The pets resulted in a “significant difference in occupational disruptiveness”, suggesting they could ease the burden on care workers.
With one in 10 social care jobs vacant, a temptation may be to use the pets to free up pressed staff from spending time with residents. Care workers at Oak Manor, where the pets have been used for a year, said they must not be deployed in the same way some parents pacify children with iPads. Success comes when the pets provide a familiar focus when agitation and anxiety is rising and they encourage socialisation as residents pet them together.
