Intuition Robotics announced today that it is expanding its mission of improving the lives of older adults to include enhancing their interactions with their physicians. The Israeli startup has developed the AI-based, award-winning proactive social robot ElliQ which has spent over 30,000 days in older adults' homes over the past two years. Now ElliQ will help increase patient engagement while offering primary care providers continuous actionable data and insights for early detection and intervention. The very big challenge Intuition Robotics set up to solve was to "understand how to create a relationship between a human and a machine," says co-founder and CEO Dor Skuler. Unlike a number of unsuccessful high-profile social robots (e.g., Pepper) that tried to perform multiple functions in multiple settings, ElliQ has focused exclusively on older adults living alone.

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Dor Skuler, CEO and co-founder of Intuition Robotics, about a socially assistive robot for older adults named ElliQ. Skuler discusses the motivation for ElliQ, how it infers context and changes its behavior accordingly, and how ElliQ adapts its behavior over time. Below is a video that shows what interactions with ElliQ look like. Dor Skuler has co-founded five ventures, the most recent being Intuition Robotics. Skuler holds an MBA and Master's of Science in Marketing from Temple University, has co-authored'Cloud Computing: Business Trends and Technologies' published by Wiley in 2016 and holds board level advisory and director roles for several telecoms, cyber security and tech-led social impact ventures.

As a part of my series about "Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years" I had the pleasure of interviewing Dor Skuler. A serial entrepreneur, Dor has co-founded five ventures, the most recent being Intuition Robotics, following his passion to develop artificial intelligence-driven robotics that address major social issues of the 21st century. Having trained in Israel's elite military intelligence unit 8200, Dor made a mark on interactive broadcast technology with Zing Interactive Media (acquired by Invesco, NASDAQ: IVZ) and security software through Safend (acquired by Wave Systems Corp, NASDAQ: WAVX). Dor then joined Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) to create and lead innovative ventures, most notably as Founder and GM of Cloudband, the world's first platform for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), cited by Nokia as a major motive to purchasing the French-American telecoms giant. As Senior Vice President at Alcatel-Lucent, Dor was a regular speaker on the telecoms circuit, frequently cited in the media and made the Global Telecom Business '40 under 40' list in 2009, 2011 and 2013.

I brace for rejection, but then the robot lets out a balooop and shimmies back and forth. This, I am to presume, means Kuri loves me too. Interacting with Kuri, a robot set to hit the market in December, is at once fascinating, delightful, and puzzling. Kuri's creators call it a "companion robot," but this is no Furby. Kuri belongs to a new class of machines that actually are intelligent, and actually make useful assistants at home.