Assessing Acceptance of Assistive Social Agent Technology by Older Adults: the Almere Model

This paper proposes a model of technology acceptance that is specifically developed to test the acceptance of assistive social agents by elderly users. The research in this paper develops and tests an adaptation and theoretical extension of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by explaining intent to use not only in terms of variables related to functional evaluation like perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, but also variables that relate to social interaction. The new model was tested using controlled experiment and longitudinal data collected regarding three different social agents at elderly care facilities and at the homes of older adults. The model was strongly supported accounting for 59-79% of the variance in usage intentions and 49-59% of the variance in actual use. These findings contribute to our understanding of how elderly users accept assistive social agents

relating conversational expressiveness to social presence and accpetance of an assistive social robot

Exploring the relationship between social presence, conversational expressiveness, and robot acceptance, we set up an experiment with a robot in an eldercare institution, comparing a more and less social condition. Participants showed more expressiveness with a more social agent and a higher score on expressiveness correlated with higher scores on social presence. Furthermore, scores on social presence correlated with the scores on the intention to use the system in the near future. However, we found no correlation between conversational expressiveness and robot acceptance

The influence of social presence on acceptance of a companion robot by older people

If robotic companions are to be used in the near future by aging adults, they have to be accepted by them. In the process of developing a methodology to measure, predict and explain acceptance of robotic companions, we researched the influence of social abilities, social presence and perceived enjoyment. After an experiment (n=30) that included collecting usage data and a second experiment (n=40) with a robot in a more and less sociable condition we were able to confirm the relevance of these concepts. Results suggest that social abilities contribute to the sense of social presence when interacting with a robotic companion and this leads, through higher enjoyment to a higher acceptance score.This work was supported in part by the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and in part by the European Commission Division FP6-IST Future and Emerging Technologies under Contract FP6-002020 (Cogniron)

Towards a Framework for Agent Coordination and Reorganization, AgentCoRe

Research in the area of Multi-Agent System (MAS) organization has shown that the ability for a MAS to adapt its organizational structure can be beneficial when coping with dynamics and uncertainty in the MASs environment. Different types of reorganization exist, such as changing relations and interaction patterns between agents, changing agent roles and changing the coordination style in the MAS. In this paper we propose a framework for agent Coordination and Reorganization (AgentCoRe) that incorporates each of these aspects of reorganization. We describe both declarative and procedural knowledge an agent uses to decompose and assign tasks, and to reorganize. The RoboCupRescue simulation environment is used to demonstrate how AgentCoRe is used to build a MAS that is capable of reorganizing itself by changing relations, interaction patterns and agent roles