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The articles in this special section focuses on the use of socially assistive robots for use in the healthcare industry. Due to the serious shortage of healthcare professionals, socially assistive robots are proving themselves a viable complementary tool to address this demand. Motivated by these concerns and the benefits of using robotic systems to provide customized help, the goal of this special issue is to provide a snapshot of state-of-the-art advancements and recent novel results in the field of socially assistive robotics.

Socially intelligent robotics is the pursuit of creating robots capable of exhibiting natural-appearing social qualities. Beyond the basic capabilities of moving and acting autonomously, the field has focused on the use of the robot's physical embodiment to communicate and interact with users in a social and engaging manner. One of its components, socially assistive robotics, focuses on helping human users through social rather than physical interaction. Early results already demonstrate the promises of socially assistive robotics, a new interdisciplinary research area with large horizons of fascinating and much needed research. Even as socially assistive robotic technology is still in its early stages of development, the next decade promises systems that will be used in hospitals, schools, and homes in therapeutic programs that monitor, encourage, and assist their users. This is an important time in the development of the field, when the board technical community and the beneficiary populations must work together to shape the field toward its intended impact on improved human quality of life

The eight papers in this special section focus on computer-based intelligent technologies for improving the quality of life.