This dog doesn’t shed, have fleas, or need to be taken for a walk, but still provides companionship for grandma, that’s what researchers at Saint Louis University have concluded. The group conducted a study to compare how residents of three nursing homes interacted with Sparky, a living, medium-sized gentle mutt, and Aibo, a doggie robot once manufactured by Sony that looks like a three-dimensional cartoon.
The researchers were surprised to find that the robotic dog worked almost as well as the real dog at alleviating loneliness and causing the residents to form attachments.
To test whether residents connected better with Sparky or Aibo, researchers divided a total of 38 nursing home residents into three groups. All were asked questions to assess their level of loneliness. One group saw Sparky once a week for 30 minutes, another group had similar visits with Aibo, and a control group saw neither furry nor mechanical critter.
The residents who received visits from real and artificial pooches felt less lonely and more attached to their canine attention-givers than those who got visits from neither.
Researchers said the results from this study proves robotic dogs could help individuals who can not have a real dog of their own and possibly pave the way for developing robotic dogs that provide both companionship and that also could be programmed to help with health issues such as reminders to take medication, or send out an alert if a person is in trouble.

Source: St. Louis University