Author: Adriana Lorena Gonzalez De la Garza Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Social robots can help people with a variety of problems in everyday life. One of the issues that have been explored in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is using social robots as companions, or to help with issues such as loneliness. Loneliness is a problem seen extensively in older adults, especially those who live alone as they have reduced social interaction. We investigate the use of a humanoid social service robot that can be used for conversation. Through iterative prototyping, we designed and developed a robotic behaviour to support individual self-reflection and wellness. We proceeded to then implement it as a stand-alone conversational social robot using Softbank's humanoid robot NAO. Our approach relies on simple interaction design to avoid high robotic expectations and achieve a robust reflective behaviour. To learn about our behaviour's feasibility, what people thought of it, and if people wanted to use it, we conducted a study where we deployed our novel behaviour using our stand alone offline conversational robot. We deployed our robot completely unsupervised and unmonitored for two nights into the homes of 14 older adults 65 and over. This study showed that most participants engaged with, and reported enjoying using the robot; based on participant's feedback, our simple behaviour was able to successfully aid more than half of our participants to engage in self-reflection. This thesis provides a first step towards robots as an in-home companion for older adults by leveraging simple conversational techniques that prompt people to self reflect by talking about their day-to-day lives and feelings. Future long-term deployment can help us learn if our robot could potentially help older adults alleviate feelings of loneliness and thus, helping decrease the related stress and anxiety that comes with it.
Author: Sofia Thunberg Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press ISBN: 9180755747 Category : Languages : en Pages : 175
Book Description
This thesis explores, through a mixed-methods approach, what happens when companion robots are deployed in care homes for older adults by looking at different perspectives from key stakeholders. Nine studies are presented with decision makers in municipalities, care staff and older adults, as participants, and the studies have primarily been carried out in the field in care homes and activity centres, where both qualitative (e.g., observations and workshops) and quantitative data (surveys) have been collected. The thesis shows that companion robots seem to be here to stay and that they can contribute to a higher quality of life for some older adults. It further presents some challenges with a certain discrepancy between what decision makers want and what staff might be able to facilitate. For future research and use of companion robots, it is key to evaluate each robot model and potential use case separately and develop clear routines for how they should be used, and most importantly, let all stakeholders be part of the process. The knowledge contribution is the holistic view of how different actors affect each other when emerging robot technology is introduced in a care environment. Den här avhandlingen utforskar vad som händer när sällskapsrobotar införs på omsorgsboenden för äldre genom att titta på perspektiv från olika intressenter. Nio studier presenteras med kommunala beslutsfattare, vårdpersonal och äldre som deltagare. Studierna har i huvudsak genomförts i fält på särskilda boenden och aktivitetscenter där både kvalitativa- (exempelvis observationer och workshops) och kvantitativa data (enkäter) har samlats in. Avhandlingen visar att sällskapsrobotar verkar vara här för att stanna och att de kan bidra till en högre livskvalitet för vissa äldre. Den visar även på en del utmaningar med en viss diskrepans mellan vad beslutsfattare vill införa och vad personalen har möjlighet att utföra i sitt arbete. För framtida forskning och användning av sällskapsrobotar är det viktigt att utvärdera varje robotmodell och varje användningsområde var för sig och ta fram tydliga rutiner för hur de ska användas, och viktigast av allt, låta alla intressenter vara en del av processen. Kunskapsbidraget med avhandlingen är en helhetssyn på hur olika aktörer påverkar varandra när ny robotteknik introduceras i en vårdmiljö
Author: Asbjørn Følstad Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030948900 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Chatbot Research and Design, CONVERSATIONS 2021, which was held during November 2021.Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online. The 12 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 25 submissions. The papers in the proceedings are structured in four topical groups: Chatbot User Insight, Chatbots Supporting Collaboration and Social Interaction, and Chatbot UX and Design.
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309671035 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 317
Book Description
Social isolation and loneliness are serious yet underappreciated public health risks that affect a significant portion of the older adult population. Approximately one-quarter of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated, and a significant proportion of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. People who are 50 years of age or older are more likely to experience many of the risk factors that can cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness, such as living alone, the loss of family or friends, chronic illness, and sensory impairments. Over a life course, social isolation and loneliness may be episodic or chronic, depending upon an individual's circumstances and perceptions. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that social isolation presents a major risk for premature mortality, comparable to other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity. As older adults are particularly high-volume and high-frequency users of the health care system, there is an opportunity for health care professionals to identify, prevent, and mitigate the adverse health impacts of social isolation and loneliness in older adults. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults summarizes the evidence base and explores how social isolation and loneliness affect health and quality of life in adults aged 50 and older, particularly among low income, underserved, and vulnerable populations. This report makes recommendations specifically for clinical settings of health care to identify those who suffer the resultant negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness and target interventions to improve their social conditions. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults considers clinical tools and methodologies, better education and training for the health care workforce, and dissemination and implementation that will be important for translating research into practice, especially as the evidence base for effective interventions continues to flourish.
Author: Yorick Wilks Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9027288402 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
What will it be like to admit Artificial Companions into our society? How will they change our relations with each other? How important will they be in the emotional and practical lives of their owners – since we know that people became emotionally dependent even on simple devices like the Tamagotchi? How much social life might they have in contacting each other? The contributors to this book discuss the possibility and desirability of some form of long-term computer Companions now being a certainty in the coming years. It is a good moment to consider, from a set of wide interdisciplinary perspectives, both how we shall construct them technically as well as their personal philosophical and social consequences. By Companions we mean conversationalists or confidants – not robots – but rather computer software agents whose function will be to get to know their owners over a long period. Those may well be elderly or lonely, and the contributions in the book focus not only on assistance via the internet (contacts, travel, doctors etc.) but also on providing company and Companionship, by offering aspects of real personalization.
Author: José Bravo Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3031213335 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 1140
Book Description
This book reports a set of novel research initiatives on ambient intelligence and ubiquitous computing that help researchers and practitioners identify recent advances, as well as the frontiers in these study domains. During the last two decades, both study areas have gained great interest in industry and academia due to the benefits of using smart solutions in various application domains, such as health care, ambient-assisted living, personal security and privacy, citizen participation, provision of urban services, and precision agriculture and farming. The articles included in this book report solutions and provide empirical results on their suitability to address problems and opportunities in these application domains. The articles also include discussions on how the proposals and their evaluation results inform the design of the next generation of ubiquitous and smart systems. Researchers, practitioners, and graduate students take advantage of this knowledge to address innovation and engineering aspects of smart and ubiquitous solutions for the next decade.
Author: Bilge Mutlu Publisher: ISBN: 9781450348850 Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
HRI '17: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction Mar 06, 2017-Mar 09, 2017 Vienna, Austria. You can view more information about this proceeding and all of ACM�s other published conference proceedings from the ACM Digital Library: http://www.acm.org/dl.
Author: Oliver Korn Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3030171078 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
Social robots not only work with humans in collaborative workspaces – we meet them in shopping malls and even more personal settings like health and care. Does this imply they should become more human, able to interpret and adequately respond to human emotions? Do we want them to help elderly people? Do we want them to support us when we are old ourselves? Do we want them to just clean and keep things orderly – or would we accept them helping us to go to the toilet, or even feed us if we suffer from Parkinson’s disease? The answers to these questions differ from person to person. They depend on cultural background, personal experiences – but probably most of all on the robot in question. This book covers the phenomenon of social robots from the historic roots to today’s best practices and future perspectives. To achieve this, we used a hands-on, interdisciplinary approach, incorporating findings from computer scientists, engineers, designers, psychologists, doctors, nurses, historians and many more. The book also covers a vast spectrum of applications, from collaborative industrial work over education to sales. Especially for developments with a high societal impact like robots in health and care settings, the authors discuss not only technology, design and usage but also ethical aspects. Thus this book creates both a compendium and a guideline, helping to navigate the design space for future developments in social robotics.
Author: Cynthia Breazeal Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262524315 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
Cynthia Breazeal here presents her vision of the sociable robot of the future, a synthetic creature and not merely a sophisticated tool. A sociable robot will be able to understand us, to communicate and interact with us, to learn from us and grow with us. It will be socially intelligent in a humanlike way. Eventually sociable robots will assist us in our daily lives, as collaborators and companions. Because the most successful sociable robots will share our social characteristics, the effort to make sociable robots is also a means for exploring human social intelligence and even what it means to be human. Breazeal defines the key components of social intelligence for these machines and offers a framework and set of design issues for their realization. Much of the book focuses on a nascent sociable robot she designed named Kismet. Breazeal offers a concrete implementation for Kismet, incorporating insights from the scientific study of animals and people, as well as from artistic disciplines such as classical animation. This blending of science, engineering, and art creates a lifelike quality that encourages people to treat Kismet as a social creature rather than just a machine. The book includes a CD-ROM that shows Kismet in action.