Towards long term acceptance of Socially Assistive Robots in retirement houses: use case definition

Abstract

The deployment of new assistive technologies, in general, and Socially Assistive Robots (SAR) and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) ecosystems, in particular, faces many issues regarding long term adherence, acceptability and utility. Most of these issues are due to design processes that do not take into account the needs, preferences and values of intended users. This paper presents the first steps of two regional projects involving long term evaluation of these technologies in the context of a retirement house. These projects follow a human-centred and participatory design approach to overcome usage barriers. To date, there are no research contributions in which a socially assistive robot, designed for and with users, has been tested in field trials for long term, in a real scenario. This paper describes the proposed methodology, the process already started to analyse practices and user’s needs, and the implementation of the first use case to be deployed for the Socially Assistive Robot in the retirement house.