2 research outputs found
Assistive robots for the social management of health: a framework for robot design and human-robot interaction research
There is a close connection between health and the quality of one's social
life. Strong social bonds are essential for health and wellbeing, but often
health conditions can detrimentally affect a person's ability to interact with
others. This can become a vicious cycle resulting in further decline in health.
For this reason, the social management of health is an important aspect of
healthcare. We propose that socially assistive robots (SARs) could help people
with health conditions maintain positive social lives by supporting them in
social interactions. This paper makes three contributions, as detailed below.
We develop a framework of social mediation functions that robots could perform,
motivated by the special social needs that people with health conditions have.
In this framework we identify five types of functions that SARs could perform:
a) changing how the person is perceived, b) enhancing the social behavior of
the person, c) modifying the social behavior of others, d) providing structure
for interactions, and e) changing how the person feels. We thematically
organize and review the existing literature on robots supporting human-human
interactions, in both clinical and non-clinical settings, and explain how the
findings and design ideas from these studies can be applied to the functions
identified in the framework. Finally, we point out and discuss challenges in
designing SARs for supporting social interactions, and highlight opportunities
for future robot design and HRI research on the mediator role of robots.Comment: 21 pages, 2 fig
Proceedings of the Workshop on Social Robots in Therapy: Focusing on Autonomy and Ethical Challenges
Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used in HRI research by
including social robots in health-care interventions by virtue of their ability
to engage human users both social and emotional dimensions. Research projects
on this topic exist all over the globe in the USA, Europe, and Asia. All of
these projects have the overall ambitious goal to increase the well-being of a
vulnerable population. Typical work in RAT is performed using remote controlled
robots; a technique called Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ). The robot is usually controlled,
unbeknownst to the patient, by a human operator. However, WoZ has been
demonstrated to not be a sustainable technique in the long-term. Providing the
robots with autonomy (while remaining under the supervision of the therapist)
has the potential to lighten the therapists burden, not only in the therapeutic
session itself but also in longer-term diagnostic tasks. Therefore, there is a
need for exploring several degrees of autonomy in social robots used in
therapy. Increasing the autonomy of robots might also bring about a new set of
challenges. In particular, there will be a need to answer new ethical questions
regarding the use of robots with a vulnerable population, as well as a need to
ensure ethically-compliant robot behaviours. Therefore, in this workshop we
want to gather findings and explore which degree of autonomy might help to
improve health-care interventions and how we can overcome the ethical
challenges inherent to it.Comment: 25 pages, editors for the proceedings: Pablo G. Esteban, Daniel
Hern\'andez Garc\'ia, Hee Rin Lee, Pauline Chevalier, Paul Baxter, Cindy
Bethe