Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) can uniquely provide assistance to human users through social interaction [1]. A great variety of SARs for elderly care have been designed, tested and evaluated [2-27], and even though they demonstrate great potential, they still only remain research endeavors. Why? Many factors come to play, such as 1) the cost and investment required to bring to market and maintaining these robots, 2) finding the right application where user expectations [28-33] and SARs’ capabilities are both met, and 3) providing compelling evidence to help propel the necessary changes to policies and regulations to support their use in real world settings. The SMART core project proposal aims to set up the needed environment to evaluate SAR technologies through field trials in long-term residences and homes. Doing so will help identify needs, requirements and barriers, which will orient technological research activities, through iterative co-design cycles with incremental refinement and exploration. It will also generate opportunities to identify technology spin-offs for specific applications, to gradually get them to market. Since health services in Quebec, Ontario and throughout Canada are largely under state control, we want to exploit such “living-lab” experimental settings to study how to influence public policy-makers for state orientations in the short, medium and long term. Our goal is to help move policy makers beyond what are frequently reactive responses to technological breakthroughs, by identifying settings and frameworks that will facilitate a more timely and effective transfer of knowledge from the SAR research community to decision makers. The anticipated impacts of SMART involve A) creating a field-trial experimental framework where a diverse group of SAR technologies can be demonstrated and studied; B) identifying the conditions of success for knowledge mobilization, knowledge and technology exchange and exploitation, from an engaged community of users and stakeholders to the policy makers.