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ocially intelligent robotics is the pursuit of creating robots capable of exhibiting natur-al-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 com-ponents, socially assistive robotics, focuses on helping human users through social rather than physical interaction [1]. The study of human-robot interaction (HRI) for socially assistive robotics applications is a new, interdisciplinary and increasingly popular research area that brings together a broad spectrum of research including robotics, medicine, social and cogni-tive sciences, and neuroscience, among others. In contrast to interactive robotics, which aims to entertain and/or create simple basic rela-tionships with human users, assistive robotics focuses on aiding human users with special needs in their daily activities. Assistive robotics in general and socially assistive robotics in particular have the potential to enhance the quality of life for broad populations of users: the elderly, indi-viduals with physical impairments and those in rehabilitation therapy, and individuals with cog-nitive disabilities and developmental and social disorders. However, such systems pose a new challenge of being both population-relevant and highly individualized to the special needs of each user in the particular beneficiary population. Application Domains In this section, we review the principle application domains of socially assistive robotics that have so far been identified: care of the elderly, care of individuals with physical recovery/rehabil-itation and training needs, and care of individuals with cognitive and social disabilities. Care of the Elderly As the world’s population is growing older, a wide array of new challenges are arising. It is esti-mated that in the year 2050, there will be three times more people over the age 85 than there are today (see Figure 1). A significant portion of the ageing population is expected to nee