Building a smart robot for seniors

About a dozen people in the San Francisco Bay area, all 60 or older, are beta testing the ElliQ robot in their homes.

Danielle Ishak spends her days developing a kind of domestic robot plucked from a science-fiction movie. The biggest problem facing the 28-year-old robotics researcher is figuring out whether people might actually want one in their homes.

This year hasn’t been especially encouraging in the nascent industry of home robotics. One startup founded by a pair of former Google colleagues, called TickTock, experimented with robot vacuums, teaching aids for kids and a video-chat machine on wheels.