How do Consumers' Gender and Rational Thinking Affect the Acceptance of Entertainment Social Robots?

In recent years, the rapid ageing of the population, a longer life expectancy and elderly people's desire to live independently are social changes that put pressure on healthcare systems. This context is boosting the demand for companion and entertainment social robots on the market and, consequently, producers and distributors are interested in knowing how these social robots are accepted by consumers. Based on technology acceptance models, a parsimonious model is proposed to estimate the intention to use this new advanced social robot technology and, in addition, an analysis is performed to determine how consumers' gender and rational thinking condition the precedents of the intention to use. The results show that gender differences are more important than suggested by the literature. While women gave greater social influence and perceived enjoyment as the main motives for using a social robot, in contrast, men considered their perceived usefulness to be the principal reason and, as a differential argument, the ease of use. Regarding the reasoning system, the most significant differences occurred between heuristic individuals, who stated social influence as the main reason for using a robot, and the more rational consumers, who gave ease of use as a differential argument

A theory-driven evaluation of an early childhood school readiness programme in an under-served area in the Western Cape Province

Early childhood development, care and education interventions coordinate resources and services that are aimed at stimulating growth for young children. Resource constraints in low and middle-income countries contribute towards a lag in childhood development initiatives compared to high-income countries. This thesis focused on the context of South Africa where the government has a long-term objective of ensuring that all children have access to quality services. However, the attainment of this goal is currently not a financially viable option, and many community-based organisations resort to alternative provisions of early childhood interventions to ensure that poor children are served. This thesis investigated implementation and associated outcomes for the Family in Focus (FiF) programme. This home-based early education programme that is targeted at young children between the ages of 0-6 years, who live in poor and marginalised communities where access and resources for care and stimulation are limited, was the programme of interest. A small sample theory-driven evaluation approach was applied to this programme to assess its viability to alleviate service access issues and produce meaningful outcomes for marginalised children. Evaluation questions were posed and a descriptive research design and a pre-post non-equivalent group quasi-experimental design that compared the results of the FiF programme to a traditional pre-school were utilised. Qualitative descriptions, descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (t-tests) were used to analyse the results. The FiF programme theory, although not initially clearly defined, was found to be plausible with moderate change expected for the beneficiaries of the programme. The programme, however, had a very low implementation fidelity level of 37.5%, meaning that the programme was not being implemented according to design. This was further associated with poor outcomes for the small sample of children in the FiF programme group utilised. Across the five developmental outcomes of cognitive, language, motor, social and emotional development, outcomes were particularly poor for the first three development domains against South African norms and the comparison group used in the evaluation. Early childhood education home-visiting programmes have the ultimate goal of improving child development outcomes. However, evidence shows that these programmes seem to be more successful in improving parenting skills and caregiver coping, without reaching the former ultimate goal. The comprehensive approach to assessing child development in underserved areas in this evaluation provided a novel overview of the interaction of multiple factors in school readiness in impoverished communities. There is still a lingering question as to the benefits of home visiting programmes that are increasingly being implemented across the country as an alternative provision of early childhood care and education services

Gender Fairness in Social Robotics : Exploring a Future Care of Peripartum Depression

In this paper we investigate the possibility of socially assistive robots (SARs) supporting diagnostic screening for peripartum depression (PPD) within the next five years. Through a HRI/socio-legal collaboration, we explore the gender norms within PPD in Sweden, to inform a gender-sensitive approach to designing SARs in such a setting, as well as governance implications. This is achieved through conducting expert interviews and qualitatively analysing the data. Based on the results, we conclude that a gender-sensitive approach is a necessity in relation to the design and governance of SARs for PPD screening

Resurgence and convergence : religion and development, with a focus on social capital among Akha in North Thailand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North Campus, New Zealand

This Masters thesis research aims to contribute to the fledgling body of development industry literature that seriously considers the intersect of science, religion, and development. Religion is gaining recognition as an important aspect of development processes; previous neglect of it has been cited as one reason for the failure of many development efforts. An evolutionary framework would suggest the interaction of the large human movements of religion and the development industry would inevitably include resurgence of religion, sometimes in unfamiliar forms, along with religion's convergence with development, both among societies generally as they evolve into multiple modernities, and through interactions specific to the development industry and religion. This thesis identifies and discusses these trends and interactions with reference to improving development research and practice. Having demonstrated that religion does matter for development, I go on to show how it matters in one instance. This thesis assesses the potentials and limitations of one indigenous religion's ritual practices for creating and maintaining social capital among an indicative sample group of people who have experienced dislocation resulting from development. Fieldwork using primarily qualitative methods was among Akha hilltribe people living in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, with a focus, though not exclusively, on those living in slums. Findings indicate that among city Akha. their religious ritual has lost the primary role it previously occupied in Akha villages as a social capital generator. However, further analysis suggests Akhas' religious experience predisposes them to conversion to access the social capital evident among Christian Akha in Chiang Mai, and that through this process is occurring a negotiation of convergence between Akha religion and modernising forces which will affect all Akha. I conclude that both the identified wider trends and context-specific example of religion- development interaction demonstrate the value in development practitioners and theorists moving towards understanding and applying a non-instrumental valuing of religion

From social robots to creative humans and back

The research on physically and socially situated artificial agents could complement and enrich computational models of creativity. This paper discusses six perspective lines of inquiry at the intersection of creativity and social robotics. It provides a description of ways in which the field of social robotics may influence (and be influenced by) creativity research in psychology and speculates how human-machine co-creation will affect the notions of both human and artificial creativity. By discussing potential research areas, the authors hope to outline an agenda for future collaboration between creativity scholars in psychology, social robotics, and computer science

Experiential AI: A transdisciplinary framework for legibility and agency in AI

Experiential AI is presented as a research agenda in which scientists and artists come together to investigate the entanglements between humans and machines, and an approach to human-machine learning and development where knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. The paper discusses advances and limitations in the field of explainable AI; the contribution the arts can offer to address those limitations; and methods to bring creative practice together with emerging technology to create rich experiences that shed light on novel socio-technical systems, changing the way that publics, scientists and practitioners think about AI.Comment: 10 pages, 3 appendice

Robots to the Rescue: A Review of Studies on Differential Medical Diagnosis Employing Ontology-Based Chat Bot Technology

Access to medical care is a global issue. Technology-aided approaches have been applied in addressing this. Interventions have however not focused on medical diagnosis as a fully automated procedure and available applications employ mainly text-based inputs rather than conversation in natural language. We explored the utility of ontology-based chatbot technology for the design of intelligent agents for medical diagnosis through a systematic review of the most recent related literature. English articles published in 2011-2016 returned 233 hits which yielded 11 relevant articles after a 3-stage screening. Findings showed that the creation of expert systems had been the focus of many the studies which utilize the physician-system-patient framework with system training based mostly on expert knowledge for designing web- or mobile phone-based applications that serve assistive purposes. Findings further indicated gaps in the design and evaluation of more effective systems deployable as standalone applications, for example, on an embodied robotic system. The need for technology supporting the physical examination part of diagnosis, connection to data sources on patients’ vitals and medical history are also indicated in addition to the need for more qualitative work on natural language-based interaction. The system should be one that is continuously learning. Future works should also be directed towards the building of more robust knowledge base as well as evaluation of theory-based diagnostic methodological option

What do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About Human-Robot Interaction?

This is a collection of papers presented at the workshop What Do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About HRI , held at the 2010 Human-Robot Interaction Conference, in Osaka, Japan