Social robots for older users: a possibility to support assessment and social interventions

In the last decades, various researches in the field of robotics have created numerous opportunities for innovative support of the older population. The goal of this work was to review and highlight how social robots can help the daily life of older people, and be useful also as assessment tools. We will underline the aspects of usability and acceptability of robotic supports in the psychosocial work with older persons. The actual usability of the system influences the perception of the ease of use only when the user has no or low experience, while expert users’ perception is related to their attitude towards the robot. This finding should be more deeply analysed because it may have a strong influence on the design of future interfaces for elderly-robot interaction. Robots can play an important role to tackle the societal challenge of the growing older population. The authors report some recent studies with older users, where it was demonstrated that the acceptability of robotics during daily life activities, and also in cognitive evaluation, could be supported by social robot

A complementing approach for identifying ethical issues in care robotics – grounding ethics in practical use

We use a long-term study of a robotic eating-aid for disabled users to illustrate how empirical use give rise to a set of ethical issues that might be overlooked in ethic discussions based on theoretical extrapolation of the current state-of-the-art in robotics. This approach provides an important complement to the existing robot ethics by revealing new issues as well as providing actionable guidance for current and future robot design. We discuss our material in relation to the literature on robot ethics, specifically the risk of robots performing care taking tasks and thus causing increased isolation for care recipients. Our data identifies a different set of ethical issues such as independence, privacy, and identity where robotics, if carefully designed and developed, can make positive contributions

Creating Interaction Scenarios With a New Graphical User Interface

The field of human-centered computing has known a major progress these past few years. It is admitted that this field is multidisciplinary and that the human is the core of the system. It shows two matters of concern: multidisciplinary and human. The first one reveals that each discipline plays an important role in the global research and that the collaboration between everyone is needed. The second one explains that a growing number of researches aims at making the human commitment degree increase by giving him/her a decisive role in the human-machine interaction. This paper focuses on these both concerns and presents MICE (Machines Interaction Control in their Environment) which is a system where the human is the one who makes the decisions to manage the interaction with the machines. In an ambient context, the human can decide of objects actions by creating interaction scenarios with a new visual programming language: scenL.Comment: 5th International Workshop on Intelligent Interfaces for Human-Computer Interaction, Palerme : Italy (2012

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

The emergence of care robotics: A publication and patent analysis

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Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Socially Assistive Robot Enabled Personalised Care for People with Dementia in Australian Private Homes

Australia’s population is ageing and a large number of people are living in their own homes. Motivated by design science as the research methodology, the authors in this paper embark the research on designing, implementing, trialling and evaluating robot enabled user-centred care for people with dementia in home-based settings. Given the importance of pursuing person-centred care practice, this research involves marrying personhood in health care with socially assistive robotics to the designs of social robot enabled person-centred care services. We have conducted first ever longitudinal robotic trials through real deployments in Australian private dwellings to evaluate the impact of the designed socially assistive robots on older people with dementia. The data analyses have been performed through both interactional data (with 2044 times of interaction and a total of 167 hours of usage) and quality of robot experience survey. The descriptive analysis of interactional data show that the designed socially assistive robot enabled care system has facilitated breaking the technology barrier of people with dementia, positively proving sensory enrichment to participants and provided respires to the participants’ carers. The quality of robot experience survey statistics indicate the participants had positive experience with their robot

Social Robots in the Home: What Factors Influence Attitudes Towards their Use in Assistive Care?

Advances in technology and science have led to the application of artificial intelligence in many different areas of life. In particular, they have led to the appearance of robots in the domestic sphere. One type of robot – namely, the social robot – has been endowed with a very human aesthetic and is designed to interact with humans, and it is increasingly being used to perform “human tasks”. Social robots have also been introduced into the social services, providing companionship and assistive services for children, the infirm and the elderly. Such usage has rightly attracted the interest of the social sciences, fuelling the debate about the acceptance of social robots by their end-users. In this paper, regression analysis is applied to data from the Eurobarometer survey to investigate how socio-demographic features and self-confidence on technological development influence European citizens’ attitudes towards robots in the social services. The results show that men, with a high level of education, living in a big city and with experience of robot use have more positive attitudes towards the concept of robots for assistive services. This study emphasizes the need to consider the relation between attitudes towards social robots and their use to avoid the generation of social inequalities