--- title: Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One: A Robot and a Team of Irish Scientists Walk Into a Senior Living Home description: It’s karaoke-rehearsal time at Knollwood Military Retirement Community, a 300-bed facility tucked away in a leafy corner of northwest Washington, D.C. Knollwood resident and retired... canonical: https://time.com/5709489/stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-one-a-robot-and-a-team-of-irish-scientists-walk-into-a-senior-living-home/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-10-24T13:14:08.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T07:38:11.585Z article:section: Health og:title: Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One: A Robot and a Team of Irish Scientists Walk Into a Senior Living Home og:description: It’s karaoke-rehearsal time at Knollwood Military Retirement Community, a 300-bed facility tucked away in a leafy corner of northwest Washington, D.C. Knollwood resident and retired... og:url: https://time.com/5709489/stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-one-a-robot-and-a-team-of-irish-scientists-walk-into-a-senior-living-home/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One: A Robot and a Team of Irish Scientists Walk Into a Senior Living Home twitter:description: It’s karaoke-rehearsal time at Knollwood Military Retirement Community, a 300-bed facility tucked away in a leafy corner of northwest Washington, D.C. Knollwood resident and retired... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Stop Me if You've Heard This One: A Robot and a Team of Irish Scientists Walk Into a Senior Living Home by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Oct 24, 2019 1:14 PM CUT by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Oct 24, 2019 1:14 PM CUT It’s karaoke-rehearsal time at Knollwood Military Retirement Community, a 300-bed facility tucked away in a leafy corner of northwest Washington, D.C. Knollwood resident and retired U.S. Army Colonel Phil Soriano, 86, has hosted the facility’s semi-monthly singalongs since their debut during a boozy snowstorm happy hour in 2016\. For the late August 2019 show, he’ll share emcee duties with a special guest: Stevie, a petite and personable figure who’s been living at Knollwood for the last six weeks. Soriano wants to sing the crowd-pleasing hit “YMCA” while Stevie leads the crowd through the song’s signature dance moves. But Stevie is a robot, and this is harder than it sounds. “We could try to make him dance,” says Niamh Donnelly, the robot’s lead AI engineer, though she sounds dubious. She enters commands on a laptop. In response, Stevie stretches its peg-like arms. A grin flashes on its LED-screen face. “It would be very helpful if he had elbows,” says Conor McGinn, an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin and Stevie’s lead engineer. “It was just a thought,” Soriano says. “What matters is what Stevie’s comfortable with.” [_Click here to read the full story_](https://time.com/longform/senior-care-robot/ "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5709489/stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-one-a-robot-and-a-team-of-irish-scientists-walk-into-a-senior-living-home/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5709489/stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-one-a-robot-and-a-team-of-irish-scientists-walk-into-a-senior-living-home/"},"headline":"Stop Me if You've Heard This One: A Robot and a Team of Irish Scientists Walk Into a Senior Living Home","datePublished":"2019-10-24T13:14:08.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T07:38:11.585Z","description":"It’s karaoke-rehearsal time at Knollwood Military Retirement Community, a 300-bed facility tucked away in a leafy corner of northwest Washington, D.C. 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