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Social Robots in Care Homes for Older Adults

Observations from Participatory Design Workshops

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13086))

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Abstract

Evaluations of social robots for older adults in care home environments during the past 20 years have shown mostly positive results. However, many of these studies have been short-term and with few participants, as well as limited to few countries. Recent evidence, however, indicates that social robots might not work in all settings or for everyone. Therefore, we conducted a participatory workshop with key stakeholders as an attempt to begin to disentangle the many interrelated factors behind a successful implementation. The result showed similarities in preferred embodiment and morphology, differences in behavioural complexity and task performance, as well as a maybe surprising lack of interest in emotional support. It further showed that older adults living in care homes prior—to meeting social robots—showed relatively little interest in these robots. Based on these observations, we formulate future research directions.

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the municipality of Mjölby, the care homes involved in this research, and in particular all workshop participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, 58183, Linköping, Sweden

    Sofia Thunberg & Tom Ziemke

Authors
  1. Sofia Thunberg
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  2. Tom Ziemke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sofia Thunberg .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Engineering, Singapore, Singapore

    Haizhou Li

  2. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  3. A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore, Singapore

    Yan Wu

  4. Center for Human Technologies, Istituto Italiano Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Agnieszka Wykowska

  5. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

    Xiaorui Liu

  7. School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University, Beijing, Beijing, China

    Dongyu Li

  8. Social Cognition Human-Robot Interaction, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Jairo Perez-Osorio

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Thunberg, S., Ziemke, T. (2021). Social Robots in Care Homes for Older Adults. In: Li, H., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13086. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_41

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_41

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90524-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90525-5

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