From Jeeves to Jeannie to Siri, and Then? -- Part I: Psychological and Social Considerations -- Would a Virtual Butler Do a Good Job for Old People? Psychological Considerations about Benefits and Risks of Technological Assistance -- Framing the Invisible – The Social Background of Trust -- Part II: Experiences with/Prerequisites for Virtual or Robotic Companions -- Virtual Butler: What Can We Learn from Adaptive User Interfaces? -- Towards Affect Sensitive and Socially Perceptive Companions -- Before We Get There, Where Are We Going? -- Virtual Helper or Virtual Card Player? Contrasting Responses of Older Users -- Scenarios for Companions -- Care-O-bot R3 – Vision of a Robot Butler -- Part III: Further Developments -- Spoken Language Processing: Where Do We Go from Here? -- Virtual Butlers and Real People: Styles and Practices in Long-Term Use of a Companion -- What Issue Should Your Virtual Butler Solve Next?.

In most scenarios of the future a personalized virtual butler appears. This butler not only performs communication and coordination tasks but also gives recommendations on how to handle everyday problems. The aim of this book is to explore the prerequisites of such a personalized virtual butler by asking: what is known about the capacities and the needs of aging people; which information and communication technologies have been used in assisting/conversing with persons, especially older ones, and what were the results; what are the advantages/disadvantages of virtual butlers as mainly software programs compared robots as butlers; and which methods, especially in artificial intelligence, have to be developed further and in which direction in order to create a virtual butler in the foreseeable future?