Seniors increasingly investing in high-tech companionship
One senior couple in Walnut Creek, California has welcomed a robot to their retirement community. The device, which the pair call "Jimmy", helps with tasks such as collecting breakfast from downstairs and setting up video calls to loved ones. Retirement communities are increasingly being used as testing grounds for seniors to trial and rate new technologies that could permit greater freedom in older populations. 
Welcoming a robot into her family was never Maxine Duncan’s idea of a support aide in her older years. But this winter, she and her partner, Herbert Yarbrough, signed up to test a telepresence robot in their retirement community, the Heritage Downtown, in Walnut Creek, Calif. Their new pal has a screen for a head and scuttles around on wheels. The lure was being able to connect more easily with their families via video calls.

The couple were immediately smitten. They have named the robot Jimmy.

“It’s an easy name to remember,” said Ms. Duncan, 86, a former real estate broker. And Mr. Yarbrough, 89, takes the robot on the elevator to pick up breakfast downstairs.

“We want to keep up on technology,” said Ms. Duncan, who covets a self-driving car. “A lot of older people are isolated from people and ideas. Now we’re on the cutting edge.”

Rosie, the robot from “The Jetsons,” has arrived.

Early adopters like Ms. Duncan are on the front lines of testing new technologies that some experts say are set to upend a few of the constants of retirement. Eager not to be left behind, retirement communities are increasingly serving as testing grounds that vet winners and losers.