Companion Robots Research Articles

Do You Care for Robots That Care? Exploring the Opinions of Vocational Care Students on the Use of Healthcare Robots

Background: There has been a rapid increase in the population of senior citizens in many countries. The shortage of caregivers is becoming a pressing concern. Robots are being deployed in an attempt to fill this gap and reduce the workload of caregivers. This study explores how healthcare robots are perceived by trainee care professionals. Methods: A total of 2365 students at different vocational levels completed a questionnaire, rating ethical statements regarding beneficence, maleficence, justice, autonomy, utility, and use intentions with regard to three different types of robots (assistive, monitoring, and companion) along with six control variables: gender, age, school year, technical skills, interest in technology, and enjoying working with computers. The scores were analyzed by MANOVA statistics. Results: In relation to our research questions: All students viewed companion robots as more beneficent than monitoring and assistive robots. Level of education did not lead to any differences in appraisal. Participants rated maleficence lowest and the highest scores were given to autonomy and utility, meaning a positive evaluation of the use of healthcare robots. Surprisingly, all students rated use intentions low, indicating a poor motivation to actually use a robot in the future, although participants stated a firmer intention for using monitoring devices. Conclusion: Care students find robots useful and expect clients to benefit from them, but still are hesitant to use robots in their future practice. This study suggests that it would be wise to enrich the curriculum of intermediate care education with practical classes on the use and ethical implications of care robots, to ensure that this group of trainee care professionals fully understand the possibilities and potential downside of this emerging kind of healthcare technology.

Artificial intelligence, ethics and human values: the cases of military drones and companion robots

Can artificial intelligence (AI) be more ethical than human intelligence? Can it respect human values better than a human? This article examines some issues raised by the AI with respect to ethics. The utilitarian approach can be a solution, especially the one that uses agent-based theory. We have chosen two extreme cases: combat drones, vectors of death, and life supporting companion robots. The ethics of AI and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) must be studied on the basis of military ethics and human values when fighting. Despite the fact that they are not programmed to hurt humans or harm their dignity, companion robots can potentially endanger their social, moral as well as their physical integrity. An important ethical condition is that companion robots help the nursing staff to take better care of patients while not replacing them.

How does peoples’ perception of control depend on the criticality of a task performed by a robot

AbstractRobot companions are starting to become more common and people are becoming more familiar with devices such as Google Home, Alexa or Pepper, one must wonder what is the optimum way for people to control their devices? This paper presents an investigation into how much direct control people want to have of their robot companion and how dependent this is on the criticality of the tasks the robot performs. A live experiment was conducted in the University of Hertfordshire Robot House, with a robot companion performing four different type of tasks. The four tasks were: booking a doctor’s appointment, helping the user to build a Lego character, doing a dance with the user, and carrying biscuits for the user. The selection of these tasks was based on our previous research to define tasks which were relatively high and low in criticality. The main goal of the study was to find what level of direct control over their robot participants have, and if this was dependent on the criticality of the task performed by the robot. Fifty people took part in the study, and each experienced every task in a random order. Overall, it was found that participants’ perception of control was higher when the robot was performing a task in a semi-autonomous mode. However, for the task “carrying biscuits”, although participants perceived to be more in control with the robot performing the task in a semi-autonomous mode, they actually preferred to have the robot performing the task automatically (where they felt less in control). The results also show that, for the task “booking a doctor’s appointment”, considered to be the most critical of all four tasks, participants did not prefer that the robot chose the date of the appointment as they felt infantilised.

First, They Came for the Old and Demented: Care and Relations in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Health care technology is all the rage, and artificial intelligence (AI) has long since made its inroads into the previously human-dominated domain of care. AI is used in diagnostics, but also in therapy and assistance, sometimes in the form of social robots with fur, eyes and programmed emotions. Patient welfare, working conditions for the caretakers and cost-efficiency are routinely said to be improved by employing new technologies. The old with dementia might be provided with a robot seal, or a humanoid companion robot, and if these companions increase the happiness of the patients, why should we not venture down this road? Come to think of it, when we have these machines, why not use them as tutors in our schools and caretakers for our children? More happiness reported, as our children are entertained, well-nourished, well-trained and never alone. Lovely and loving robots have also been made, and happiness abounds when these are provided to lonely adults. Happiness all around, and a hedonistic heaven – the utilitarian’s dream, as reported, or measured, well-being reaches all-time highs. But there is a reason to be wary of this development. The logic that allows this development ultimately leads to the conclusion that we would all be best off if we could simply be wired to a computer that provided us with whatever we needed to feel perfectly satisfied. The care-giving machines are here.

Motions with Emotions?

This article examines how the interactive capabilities of companion robots, particularly their materiality and animate movements, appeal to human users and generate an image of aliveness. Building on Husserl’s phenomenological notion of a ‘double body’ and theories of emotions as affective responses, we develop a new understanding of the robots’ simulated aliveness. Analyzing empirical findings of a field study on the use of the robot Zora in care homes for older people, we suggest that the aliveness of companion robots is the result of a combination of four aspects: 1) material ingredients, 2) morphology, 3) animate movements guided by software programs and human operators as in Wizard of Oz-settings and 4) anthropomorphising narratives created by their users to support the robot’s performance. We suggest that narratives on affective states, such as, sleepiness or becoming frightened attached to the robot trigger users’ empathic feelings, caring and tenderness toward the robot.

Proactive Robots With the Perception of Nonverbal Human Behavior: A Review

Intelligent robot companions contribute significantly in improving living standards in the modern society. Therefore, human-like decision making skills are sought after during the design of such robots. On the one hand, such features enable the robot to be easily handled by its non-expert human user. On the other hand, the robot will have the capability of dealing with humans without causing any disturbance by the robot's behavior. Mimicing human emotional intelligence is one of the best and reasonable ways of laying the foundation for robotic emotional intelligence. As robots are widely deployed in social environments, perception of the situation or intentions of a user prior to an interaction is required to be proactive. Proactive robots are required to understand what is communicated by the human body language prior to approaching a human. Social constraints in an interaction could be demolished by this assessment in this regard. In this review, we incorporate various findings of human-robot interaction, social robotics and psychophysiology to assess intelligent systems which were capable of evaluating the emotional state of humans prior to an interaction. Second, we identify the cues and evaluation techniques that were utilized by such intelligent agents to simulate and evaluate the suitability of a proactive interaction. Available literature has been evaluated to distinguish limitations of existing methods and suggest possible improvements. These limitations, guiding principles to be adhered to and suggested improvements, are presented as an outcome of the review.

Reframing HRI Design Opportunities for Social Robots: Lessons Learnt from a Service Robotics Case Study Approach Using UX for HRI

Over the last few decades, semi-autonomous machine’s technology started to promote awareness towards the importance of human–robot interaction (HRI) for improving daily activities. More affordable social robots are being commercially released and in order to implement viable applications of HRI, a combination human-computer interaction and user experience methodologies could play a pivotal role in assessing new scenarios and evaluating new investigations. However, literature shows that it is still challenging to reach an optimal user experience with robotic companions. The aim of the study was to determine the chance to enhance the user experience with a semi-autonomous social robot, using user experience and human–computer interaction methodologies. In this study, a social robotic companion has been developed and prototyped in order to be adopted in a specific public environment such as a company workspace. The challenges emerged from this peculiar environment triggered the need for a more productive and comfortable office for the employees, and, at the same time, the usability, acceptance and likeability of the robotic companion have been evaluated. The results emphasize that, since HRI is highly interdisciplinary, the benefits of combining approaches from other fields could positively benefit from a meaningful social interaction with the users.

Facilitating Out-of-the-Box Solutions

Facilitating Out-of-the-Box Solutions

Design Performance Characteristics of a Social Robot Companion “Arash” for Pediatric Hospitals

This paper presents the design process and construction of a mobile social robot companion “Arash” for educational and therapeutic intervention for children with chronic diseases; one which is based on their interests and needs. This study concentrates on children with cancer who suffer from physical pain caused by both the disease and its treatment. Moreover, cancer treatment causes emotional distress, which can reduce the efficiency of medications. Using social robots to interact with ill children in a hospital environment could decrease their distress, thereby improving the efficiency of the treatment. Arash is a 15 degrees-of-freedom cost effective humanoid mobile robot companion, designed and developed to interact with children ages 4 to 12 years old. The robot has five physical subsystems: head, arms, torso, waist, and the mobile-base. Based on the robot requirements and specifications, appropriate measures were generated and thoroughly evaluated. An important and novel concept is the robots appearance, selected based on a survey taken from 50 children with chronic diseases at three pediatric hospitals in the city of Tehran. Based on these criteria and needs, Arash was designed, constructed, modified, and developed to operate in pediatric hospital environments.

Healthcare Students’ Ethical Considerations of Care Robots in The Netherlands

Background: Older adults are a rapidly growing group world-wide, requiring an increasing amount of healthcare. Technological innovations such as care robots may support the growing demand for care. However, hardly any studies address those who will most closely collaborate with care robots: the (trainee) healthcare professional. Methods: This study examined the moral considerations, perceptions of utility, and acceptance among trainee healthcare professionals toward different types of care robots in an experimental questionnaire design (N = 357). We also examined possible differences between participants’ intermediate and higher educational levels. Results: The results show that potential maleficence of care robots dominated the discussion in both educational groups. Assisting robots were seen as potentially the most maleficent. Both groups deemed companion robots least maleficent and most acceptable, while monitoring robots were perceived as least useful. Results further show that the acceptance of robots in care was more strongly associated with the participants’ moral considerations than with utility. Conclusions: Professional care education should include moral considerations and utility of robotics as emerging care technology. The healthcare and nursing students of today will collaborate with the robotic colleagues of tomorrow.

Trust and Approachability Mediate Social Decision Making in Human-Robot Interaction

As humanoid robots become more advanced and commonplace, the average user may perceive their robotic companion as human-like entities that can make social decisions, such as the deliberate choice to act fairly or selfishly. It is important for scientists and designers to consider how this will affect our interactions with social robots. The current paper explores how social decision making with humanoid robots changes as the degree of their human-likeness changes. For that purpose, we created a spectrum of human-like agents via morphing that ranged from very robot-like to very human-like in physical appearance (i.e., in increments of 20%) and measured how this change in physical humanness affected decision-making in two economic games: the Ultimatum Game (Experiment 1) and Trust Game (Experiment 2). We expected increases in human-like appearance to lead to higher rates of punishment for unfair offers and higher ratings of trust in both games. While physical humanness did not have an impact on economic decisions in either of the ex-periments, follow-up analyses showed that both subjective ratings of trust and agent approachability medi-ated the effect of agent appearance on decision-making in both experiments. Possible consequences of these findings for human-robot interactions are discussed.

67The Impact of a Companion Robot in Combatting Loneliness in People with Dementia Living in Residential Care. The MARIO Project

67The Impact of a Companion Robot in Combatting Loneliness in People with Dementia Living in Residential Care. The MARIO Project

A Novel Gesture-Based Language for Underwater Human–Robot Interaction

The underwater environment is characterized by hazardous conditions that make it difficult to manage and monitor even the simplest human operation. The introduction of a robot companion with the task of supporting and monitoring the divers during their activities and operations underwater can help to solve some of the problems that usually arise in this scenario. In this context, a proper communication between the diver and the robot is imperative for the success of the dive. However, the underwater environment poses a set of technical challenges which are not readily surmountable thus limiting the spectrum from which possibilities can be chosen. This paper presents the design and development of a gesture-based communication language which has been employed for the entire duration of the European project CADDY (Cognitive Autonomous Diving Buddy). This language, the Caddian, was built upon consolidated and standardized underwater gestures that are commonly used in recreational and professional diving. Its use and integration during field tests with a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) is also shown.

Social Cognition for Human-Robot Symbiosis—Challenges and Building Blocks

The next generation of robot companions or robot working partners will need to satisfy social requirements somehow similar to the famous laws of robotics envisaged by Isaac Asimov time ago (Asimov, 1942). The necessary technology has almost reached the required level, including sensors and actuators, but the cognitive organization is still in its infancy and is only partially supported by the current understanding of brain cognitive processes. The brain of symbiotic robots will certainly not be a “positronic” replica of the human brain: probably, the greatest part of it will be a set of interacting computational processes running in the cloud. In this article, we review the challenges that must be met in the design of a set of interacting computational processes as building blocks of a cognitive architecture that may give symbiotic capabilities to collaborative robots of the next decades: (1) an animated body-schema; (2) an imitation machinery; (3) a motor intentions machinery; (4) a set of physical interaction mechanisms; and (5) a shared memory system for incremental symbiotic development. We would like to stress that our approach is totally un-hierarchical: the five building blocks of the shared cognitive architecture are fully bi-directionally connected. For example, imitation and intentional processes require the “services” of the animated body schema which, on the other hand, can run its simulations if appropriately prompted by imitation and/or intention, with or without physical interaction. Successful experiences can leave a trace in the shared memory system and chunks of memory fragment may compete to participate to novel cooperative actions. And so on and so forth. At the heart of the system is lifelong training and learning but, different from the conventional learning paradigms in neural networks, where learning is somehow passively imposed by an external agent, in symbiotic robots there is an element of free choice of what is worth learning, driven by the interaction between the robot and the human partner. The proposed set of building blocks is certainly a rough approximation of what is needed by symbiotic robots but we believe it is a useful starting point for building a computational framework.

The impact of peoples’ personal dispositions and personalities on their trust of robots in an emergency scenario

AbstractHumans should be able to trust that they can safely interact with their home companion robot. However, robots can exhibit occasional mechanical, programming or functional errors. We hypothesise that the severity of the consequences and the timing of a robot’s different types of erroneous behaviours during an interaction may have different impacts on users’ attitudes towards a domestic robot. First, we investigated human users’ perceptions of the severity of various categories of potential errors that are likely to be exhibited by a domestic robot. Second, we used an interactive storyboard to evaluate participants’ degree of trust in the robot after it performed tasks either correctly, or with ‘small’ or ‘big’ errors. Finally, we analysed the correlation between participants’ responses regarding their personality, predisposition to trust other humans, their perceptions of robots, and their interaction with the robot. We conclude that there is correlation between the magnitude of an error performed by a robot and the corresponding loss of trust by the human towards the robot. Moreover we observed that some traits of participants’ personalities (conscientiousness and agreeableness) and their disposition of trusting other humans (benevolence) significantly increased their tendency to trust a robot more during an emergency scenario.

Augmented Human State Estimation Using Interacting Multiple Model Particle Filters With Probabilistic Data Association

The accurate human gait tracking is an important factor for various robotic applications, such as robotic walkers aiming to provide assistance to patients with different mobility impairment, social robot companions, etc. A context-aware robot control architecture needs constant knowledge of the user's kinematic state to assess the patient's gait status and adjust its movement properly to provide optimal assistance. In this letter, we present a novel human gait tracking approach that uses two particle filters (PFs) and probabilistic data association (PDA) with an interacting multiple model (IMM) scheme for a real-time selection of the appropriate motion model according to the human gait analysis and the use of the Viterbi algorithm for an augmented human gait state estimation. The gait state estimates also interact with the IMM as a prior information that drives the Markov sampling process, while the PDA ensures that the legs of the same person are coupled. The observation data in this work are provided by a laser range finder mounted on a robotic assistant walker. A detailed experimental validation is presented using ground truth data from a motion capture system, which was used in real experiments with elder subjects who presented various mobility impairments. The validation analysis regards the algorithm's accuracy, robustness to occlusions and clutter, and the gait state classification success, subject to the effect of different number of samples used in the PFs. The results for the elder subjects show the dynamics of the proposed algorithm to be used in a real-time application due to its efficacy to provide accurate and robust augmented human gait estimates with a small number of particles.

Improvement on Psychological Stability of the Elderly by Using Companion Robot

Improvement on Psychological Stability of the Elderly by Using Companion Robot

Robot companions: A legal and ethical analysis

ABSTRACTThis article addresses some of the most important legal and ethical issues posed by robot companions. Firstly, we clarify that robots are to be deemed objects and more precisely products. This on the one hand excludes the legitimacy of all such considerations involving robots as bearers of own rights and obligations, and forces a functional approach in the analysis. Secondly, pursuant to these methodological considerations we address the most relevant ethical and legal concerns, ranging from the risk of dehumanization and isolation of the user, to privacy and liability concerns, as well as financing of the diffusion of this—still expensive—technology. Solutions are briefly sketched, in order to provide the reader with sufficient indications on what strategies could and should be implemented, already in the design phase, as well as what kind of intervention ought to be favored and expected by national and European legislators. The recent Report with Recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics of January 24, 2017 by the European Parliament is specifically taken into account.

Developing social robots for aging populations: A literature review of recent academic sources

AbstractThe perception of aging populations is a major factor driving the social robot development movement. A growing body of research reflects the expanding interest in social robots. This paper synthesizes research on the development of social robots with a literature review of academic articles with publication dates ranging from 2006 to 2017. The review is divided into three themes: (a) robots as an aid in treatment; (b) robots as social assistants and home companions; and (c) robots as custodial caregivers that are viewed in terms of ethical implications. This paper outlines the issues surrounding social, commitment, assistive, and companion robots for use in medical treatment, mental health therapy, physiotherapy, care facilities, and private homes. It describes some of the ethical concerns raised by researchers and media, including questions of control, privacy, consent, and the issue of simulated versus human compassion in caregiving. The research also points out that a rhetoric of urgency concerning aging populations drives the development of robots, which frames citizens who will benefit from robots in reductive ways. We argue that the contribution of humanities and social science research, including age studies and critical gerontology, should be better integrated with discourses of social robot development, largely from technical fields.

Exploring older adult concerns regarding acceptance and use of social companion robots

Exploring older adult concerns regarding acceptance and use of social companion robots