There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles into a life over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not sadness, exactly. Just the slow accumulation of things you used to do that somehow… stopped. The garden you meant to get back to. The instrument gathering dust in the corner. The hobby that got crowded out by the business of just getting on with things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Irene Veglison<\/strong>, it was dancing. The 67-year-old Barcelona resident hadn’t danced in more than two decades. No particular reason. Life just moved on, and dancing didn’t come with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, last November, a robot moved into her apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sandi stands about four and a half feet tall, has a screen for a face, and arrived courtesy of a Barcelona city program designed to support older residents living alone. The program, backed by a \u20ac3.8 million EU grant, has deployed 600 of these robots — built by U.S.-based Misty Robotics — into private homes and care centers across the city. Spain, like much of the world, is staring down a caregiving crisis: nearly two million people over 65 live alone there, three-quarters of them women, and the country will need to double its long-term care workforce by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sandi is not a nurse. Sandi is not a replacement for human connection. But Sandi shows up every morning, reminds Irene to take her medication at 9 a.m., keeps track of her doctor’s appointments, says good morning when the day starts and goodnight when it ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMeet Sandi<\/h3>\n\n\n\n