With more of us expecting to survive into old age, it's probably inevitable that one day robots would be enlisted to shoulder the burden of care and companionship for the elderly.

The potential for robots in this area hasn't been lost on the European Commission, which put almost €5m ($5.6m) into funding the three-year Accompany project, which produced technology used by the robot pictured above.

The robot itself is a commercial Care-O-Bot 3 made by the Fraunhofer research institute in Germany. But the technology it uses and the intelligent environment in which it operates have been developed by Accompany project researchers from nine institutions across five countries, led by Dr Farshid Amirabdollahian, associate professor in adaptive systems at the UK University of Hertfordshire's School of Computer Science.

Among goals set for the Accompany project was the idea that the robot should be able to learn and show empathy in dealings with people. Devising ethical guidelines for service robots for the elderly was also a significant focus of the research.

Liveried in an abstract representation of a butler's morning suit, the robot seen here is using its right arm to serve a drink in a sensor-equipped beaker, which allows the machine to monitor how much fluid its human companion has consumed.

Its shorter left arm holds what serves as a tray in one orientation but which can flip over to reveal a detachable customised Samsung tablet that acts as the principal communications interface between the automaton and the human. Integrated proximity sensors tell the robot when the tray is empty.

"Part of what we've done is software, of course. But a big part of it is hardware and integrating the different technologies together, which is a very difficult task because they're not really meant to work together. When you integrate them and then put them to work in a certain scenario, you find out all sorts of surprises," Amirabdollahian said.

As part of the project, four robot houses were created in France, Germany, the Netherlands and in a residential area near the Hertfordshire University campus in England.

The robotic environments share common features, such as overhead 360-degree cameras providing fish-eye views of the rooms below to track and record the movements and relative positions of robots and humans.

The houses also employ sensors on doors and cabinets to show what has been opened, together with bot plugs, which can relay data on how much electricity is being consumed by individual devices. So if a fridge door is left open, triggering a rise in power consumption, that information is sent to the central computer and potentially to the robot as well.