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Telepresence Robot for Isolated Patients in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects of Socio-relationship and Telecommunication Device Types on Patients’ Acceptance of Robots

  • Conference paper
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Social Robotics (ICSR 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13818))

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  • S. Shin and D. Kang—Equally contributed to this work.

Abstract

Telecommunication devices can help mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus among the patients quarantined in hospitals. In contrast to the conventional telecommunication devices, a telepresence robot can deliver tangible communication cues from a remote sender to a receiver that vary according to level of interaction modalities. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, telecommunication interactants can be divided into two categories based on their socio-relationships. The types include those engaged in social-oriented relationships such as that between patients and families or acquaintances, and task-oriented relationships such as those between patients and doctors or nurses. We hypothesize that the types of telecommunication device used and socio-relationship would be factors affecting the COVID-19 patients’ telecommunication experiences and acceptance of telepresence robots. We conducted a user study comparing three types of telecommunication devices namely floor-based robot versus desk-based robot versus tablet with the aforementioned two types of socio-relationships. The results indicated that the participants preferred telecommunication service in a social-oriented relationship to a task-oriented relationship. A mediation analysis revealed that social presence, competency, and familiarity mediates the effects of socio-relationship type on the satisfaction of the telecommunication service. Based on the socio-relationship type, different tendencies on the effect of telecommunication device types on service evaluation were observed.

This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Institutional Program under Grant (2E31581) and the Government-wide R&D Fund for Infections Disease Research (GFID), funded by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Republic of Korea (20014463).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Intelligent and Interactive Robotics, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, 02792, Korea

    Soyeon Shin, Dahyun Kang & Sonya S. Kwak

Authors
  1. Soyeon Shin
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  2. Dahyun Kang
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  3. Sonya S. Kwak
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sonya S. Kwak .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Filippo Cavallo

  2. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  3. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Laura Fiorini

  4. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Alessandra Sorrentino

  5. Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

    Xiaorui Liu

  7. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yoshio Matsumoto

  8. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

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Shin, S., Kang, D., Kwak, S.S. (2022). Telepresence Robot for Isolated Patients in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects of Socio-relationship and Telecommunication Device Types on Patients’ Acceptance of Robots. In: Cavallo, F., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13818. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24670-8_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24670-8_24

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-24670-8

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