A review on humanoid robotics in healthcare

Humanoid robots have evolved over the years and today it is in many different areas of applications, from homecare to social care and healthcare robotics. This paper deals with a brief overview of the current and potential applications of humanoid robotics in healthcare settings. We present a comprehensive contextualization of humanoid robots in healthcare by identifying and characterizing active research activities on humanoid robot that can work interactively and effectively with humans so as to fill some identified gaps in current healthcare deficiency

Assistive Social Robots for People with Special needs

An increasing number of elderly people leads todemand for social robots to support health care and independentlife. An overview of various potential applications of social robotsis provided in this paper. In addition, the latest research progressin our institute is presented, i.e., multi-party interaction, gesturerecognition, affective computing, and attention capture. All theresearch and applications demonstrate that social robots are goodassistive robots for people with special needs

Healthcare Robotics

Robots have the potential to be a game changer in healthcare: improving health and well-being, filling care gaps, supporting care givers, and aiding health care workers. However, before robots are able to be widely deployed, it is crucial that both the research and industrial communities work together to establish a strong evidence-base for healthcare robotics, and surmount likely adoption barriers. This article presents a broad contextualization of robots in healthcare by identifying key stakeholders, care settings, and tasks; reviewing recent advances in healthcare robotics; and outlining major challenges and opportunities to their adoption.Comment: 8 pages, Communications of the ACM, 201

Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Humanization of robots: is it really such a good idea?

The aim of this review was to examine the pros and cons of humanizing social robots following a psychological perspective. As such, we had six goals. First, we defined what social robots are. Second, we clarified the meaning of humanizing social robots. Third, we presented the theoretical backgrounds for promoting humanization. Fourth, we conducted a review of empirical results of the positive effects and the negative effects of humanization on human–robot interaction (HRI). Fifth, we presented some of the political and ethical problems raised by the humanization of social robots. Lastly, we discussed the overall effects of the humanization of robots in HRI and suggested new avenues of research and development.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Moderating Effect of Demographic Characteristics on Home Healthcare Robots Adoption: An Empirical Study

The home healthcare initiative aims to reduce healthcare cost, improve post-hospitalization healthcare quality and increase patient independency. Information technologies such as home healthcare robots are expected to play a major role in this effort. There have been some preliminary findings on the socio-technical determinants of robot adoption in home healthcare. However, there is a lack of understanding of other factors that moderate the effects of these determinants. To this end, this research aims to investigate demographic characteristics as possible moderators for robot adoption based on the UTAUT model. By analyzing the data collected from a survey, this study empirically demonstrates the moderating effects of gender, age and experiences on the adoption of home healthcare robots. In addition, the findings of this research lead to the development of a decision tree that can guide a cost- effective robot design. The paper concludes with the theoretical and practical implications of this research

The social construction of human-robot co-work by means of prototype work settings

Whether we look at Europe, the USA or Japan, in many areas in the world new possibilities of employing robotic systems in work settings essentially rely on direct collaborative interaction be-tween human workers and collaborative robots leading to new distributions of agency between them and making available robotic operations as resources for performing different forms of work, work which otherwise would remain out of reach for robotic automation for the time being. In this paper we introduce our concepts of studying the social construction of these collaborative work settings and the distribution of agency, accordingly. Referring to the basic idea of actor-network theory that technology in use should be analysed in a symmetrical manner, treating all the human and nonhuman entities involved as actors, our concept of distributed agency goes beyond actor-network theory in that it introduces the notion of gradualised action, which allows distinguishing between different levels of distributed agency. Therefore, we can precisely describe, in which way and to what extent activities and actor positions are delegated to robot co-workers or remain with its human counterpart. For analysing how the distribution of agency between human and robot co-workers is socially constructed in different stages, first in laboratory settings and then in increas-ingly realistic real-world settings, we interpret the spectrum of manifestations of human-robot col-laboration as prototypically realised scenarios at different stages of elaboration. In doing so we introduce the current state of collaborative robots in the areas of industrial production and care work as they represent contrastive cases: In industrial production collaborative robots are the next step in a long-standing history of robotic automation whereas in care work the new robots are also the first robots to be employed there. We believe that in both fields a perspective on collaborative work between humans and robots as a socio-technical constellation is helpful in order to be able to identify new distributions of work tasks

Touching a mechanical body: tactile contact with body parts of a humanoid robot is physiologically arousing

A large literature describes the use of robots’ physical bodies to support communication with people. Touch is a natural channel for physical interaction, yet it is not understood how principles of interpersonal touch might carry over to human-robot interaction. Ten students participated in an interactive anatomy lesson with a small, humanoid robot. Participants either touched or pointed to an anatomical region of the robot in each of 26 trials while their skin conductance response was measured. Touching less accessible regions of the robot (e.g., buttocks and genitals) was more physiologically arousing than touching more accessible regions (e.g., hands and feet). No differences in physiological arousal were found when just pointing to those same anatomical regions. Social robots can elicit tactile responses in human physiology, a result that signals the power of robots, and should caution mechanical and interaction designers about positive and negative effects of human-robot interactions

A Review on Usability and User Experience of Assistive Social Robots for Older Persons

In the advancement of human-robot interaction technology, assistive social robots have been recognized as one of potential technologies that can provide physical and cognitive supports in older persons care. However, a major challenge faced by the designers is to develop an assistive social robot with prodigious usability and user experience for older persons who were known to have physical and cognitive limitations. A considerable number of published literatures was reporting on the technological design process of assistive social robots. However, only a small amount of attention has been paid to review the usability and user experience of the robots. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of established researches in the literatures concerning usability and user experience issues faced by the older persons when interacting with assistive social robots. The authors searched relevant articles from the academic databases such as Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science as well as Google search for the publication period 2000 to 2021. Several search keywords were typed such as ‘older persons’ ‘elderly’, ‘senior citizens’, ‘assistive social robots’, ‘companion robots’, ‘personal robots’, ‘usability’ and ‘user experience’. This online search found a total of 215 articles which are related to assistive social robots in elderly care. Out of which, 54 articles identified as significant references, and they were examined thoroughly to prepare the main content of this paper. This paper reveals usability issues of 28 assistive social robots, and feedbacks of user experience based on 41 units of assistive social robots. Based on the research articles scrutinized, the authors concluded that the key elements in the design and development of assistive social robots to improve acceptance of older persons were determined by three factors: functionality, usability and users’ experience. Functionality refers to ability of robots to serve the older persons. Usability is ease of use of the robots. It is an indicator on how successful of interaction between the robots and the users. To improve usability, robot designers should consider the limitations of older persons such as vision, hearing, and cognition capabilities when interacting with the robots. User experience reflects to perceptions, preferences and behaviors of users that occur before, during and after use the robots. Combination of superior functionality and usability lead to a good user experience in using the robots which in the end achieves satisfaction of older persons