Older Adults Living With Social Robots ©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/WONRY Promoting Social Connectedness in Long-Term Communities By Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Daniella DiPaola, Erin Partridge, Hae Won Park, and Cynthia Breazeal Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2019.2905234 Date of publication: 30 April 2019 1070-9932/19©2019IEEE S ocial robots have been used to investigate human-to-robot engagement-but connection between one person and another is the real key for human emotional wellness. This work explores the role and impact of a social robot in facilitating human-to-human engagement in an assisted-living community. Older adults, in particular, are a population in need of sufficient social connectedness to promote their well-being. While several studies have sought to investigate how social robots can help to improve older adults' quality of life, not many have studied their long-term impact on community-level engagement. This work uses a participatory, mixed-methods, human-centered approach to explore how a social robot influenced the social connectedness within a community of older adults over a three-week period. Participants engaged in daily interactions with a social robot and with associated study JUNE 2019 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE * 59http://www.ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/WONRY