Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What to Do Next? An Activity Scheduling Schema for Social Assistance Robots for Older Adults

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population (HCII 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14043))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 574 Accesses

Abstract

Due to an aging population, stressed caregivers within a stressed care sector as well as the wish of aging at home, there is an urgent need to provide solutions to cope with these challenges today and in the future. Finding technological, i.e., robotic, solutions is an interesting approach and is a highly frequented research topic. However, engineering social assistance robots (SARs) to a satisfying degree of usability and technology acceptance is challenging, because fulfilling user’s expectations – especially with older adults as key user group – means to implement naturally-feeling robotic behaviour which leads to emulate a semi-human-like task execution behaviour. Within our work, we addressed the scheduling of robotic activities based on aspects such as parallelisability for multi-task execution, user- and system-triggered commands, as well as task priorities to allow interruption or stopping of running activities or dismissing incoming commands. We assessed user’s expectations within a survey-based requirements analysis and derived a decision-making concept for scheduling incoming activities. We implemented the concept within a small app to evaluate the schema according to the acceptance of the resulting robotic behaviour. With this concept, we set a starting point to engineering well-accepted SARs from a behavioural perspective next to the finally implemented use cases and specific situations to use a SAR in the environment of older adults. This is crucial to move towards accepted technological solutions to the social challenges mentioned above that arise with an aging population.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division: World population ageing 2020 Highlights: living arrangements of older persons. United Nations, New York (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Martinez-Martin, E., Escalona, F., Cazorla, M.: Socially assistive robots for older adults and people with autism: an overview. Electronics 9, 367 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9020367

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Thomas, G., Reddy, S., Oliel, S.: WHO | Global health workforce shortage to reach 12.9 million in coming decades. https://apps.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/health-workforce-shortage/en/index.html. Accessed 08 Feb 2023

  4. Macis, D., Perilli, S., Gena, C.: Employing socially assistive robots in elderly care. In: Adjunct Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, pp. 130–138 (2022)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Yamazaki, K., et al.: Home-assistant robot for an aging society. Proc. IEEE 100, 2429–2441 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2012.2200563

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Samaddar, S., Desideri, L., Encarnação, P., Gollasch, D., Petrie, H., Weber, G.: Robotic and virtual reality technologies for children with disabilities and older adults. In: Miesenberger, K., Kouroupetroglou, G., Mavrou, K., Manduchi, R., Covarrubias Rodriguez, M., Penáz, P. (eds.) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. LNCS, vol. 13342, pp. 203–210. Springer, Cham (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08645-8_24

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Feil-Seifer, D., Mataric, M.J.: Defining socially assistive robotics. In: 9th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics, ICORR 2005, pp. 465–468 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Bradwell, H.L., Edwards, K.J., Winnington, R., Thill, S., Jones, R.B.: Companion robots for older people: importance of user-centred design demonstrated through observations and focus groups comparing preferences of older people and roboticists in South West England. BMJ Open 9, e032468 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bulgaro, A., Liberman-Pincu, E., Oron-Gilad, T.: Participatory design in socially assistive robots for older adults: bridging the gap between elicitation methods and the generation of design requirements. arXiv Prepr. arXiv:2206.10990 (2022)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Martín-García, A.V., Redolat, R., Pinazo-Hernandis, S.: Factors Influencing Intention to Technological Use in Older Adults. The TAM Model Aplication. Res Aging. 1640275211063797 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1177/01640275211063797

  11. Lindgren, H.: Younger and older adults’ perceptions on role, behavior, goal and recovery strategies for managing breakdown situations in human-robot dialogues. In: Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (2021). https://doi.org/10.1145/3472307.3484679

  12. Abdi, S., de Witte, L., Hawley, M.: Emerging technologies with potential care and support applications for older people: review of gray literature. JMIR Aging 3 (2020). https://doi.org/10.2196/17286

  13. Huang, T., Huang, C.: Elderly’s acceptance of companion robots from the perspective of user factors. Univ. Access Inf. Soc. 19(4), 935–948 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00692-9

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Queirós, A., da Rocha, N.P.: Usability, Accessibility and Ambient Assisted Living. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91226-4

  15. Gasteiger, N., et al.: Robot-delivered cognitive stimulation games for older adults. ACM Trans. Hum.-Robot Interact. 10, 1–18 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1145/3451882

  16. Sauzéon, H., Edjolo, A., Amieva, H., Consel, C., Pérès, K.: An ambient assisted living platform for supporting aging in place of prefrail and frail older adults: rationale, HomeAssist plaform, quasiexperimental design, and baseline characteristics (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Hedman, E., Ljótsson, B., Lindefors, N.: Cognitive behavior therapy via the internet: a systematic review of applications, clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness. Expert Rev. Pharmacoecon Outcomes Res. 12, 745–764 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1586/erp.12.67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Vasudavan, H., Balakrishnan, S., Murugesan, R.K.: A study on activity recognition technology for elderly care. Int. J. Curr. Res. Rev. 13, 107–111 (2021). https://doi.org/10.31782/ijcrr.2021.131225

  19. Smith, R., Dragone, M.: A dialogue-based interface for active learning of activities of daily living. In: 27th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (2022). https://doi.org/10.1145/3490099.3511130

  20. Striegl, J., Gollasch, D., Loitsch, C., Weber, G.: Designing VUIs for social assistance robots for people with Dementia. Presented at the Mensch und Computer 2021 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1145/3473856.3473887

  21. Getson, C., Nejat, G.: Socially assistive robots helping older adults through the pandemic and life after COVID-19. Robotics 10, 106 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics10030106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Song, Y., Yang, Y., Cheng, P.: The investigation of adoption of voice-user interface (VUI) in smart home systems among Chinese older adults. Sensors 22, 1614 (2022). https://doi.org/10.3390/s22041614

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Koebel, K., Lacayo, M., Murali, M., Tarnanas, I., Çöltekin, A.: Expert insights for designing conversational user interfaces as virtual assistants and companions for older adults with cognitive impairments. In: International Workshop on Chatbot Research and Design, pp. 23–38 (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Murad, C., Munteanu, C., Cowan, B.R., Clark, L.: Revolution or evolution? Speech interaction and HCI design guidelines. IEEE Pervasive Comput. 18, 33–45 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Gollasch, D., Weber, G.: Age-related differences in preferences for using voice assistants. Presented at the Mensch und Computer 2021 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1145/3473856.3473889

  26. Pollmann, K.: The modality card deck: co-creating multi-modal behavioral expressions for social robots with older adults. Multimodal Technol. Interact. 5, 33 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3390/mti5070033

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Swoboda, D., Boasen, J., Léger, P.-M., Pourchon, R., Sénécal, S.: Comparing the effectiveness of speech and physiological features in explaining emotional responses during voice user interface interactions. Appl. Sci. 12, 1269 (2022). https://doi.org/10.3390/app12031269

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Zeng, D., et al.: SHECS: A Local Smart Hands-free Elderly Care Support System on Smart AR Glasses with AI Technology. arXiv:2110.13538v1 (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Giri, G.S., Maddahi, Y., Zareinia, K.: An application-based review of haptics technology. Robotics 10, 29 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics10010029

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Bardaro, G., Antonini, A., Motta, E.: Robots for elderly care in the home: a landscape analysis and co-design toolkit. Int. J. Soc. Robot. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-021-00816-3

  31. Bradwell, H., Winnington, R., Thill, S., Jones, R.B.: Prioritising design features for companion robots aimed at older adults: stakeholder survey ranking results. In: Li, H., et al. (eds.) ICSR 2021. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 13086, pp. 774–779. Springer, Cham (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_70

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  32. Müller, S.: Realisierung nutzeradaptiven Interaktionsverhaltens für mobile Assistenzroboter (2016)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Dresden, Nöthnitzer Straße 46, 01062, Dresden, Germany

    David Gollasch & Gerhard Weber

Authors
  1. David Gollasch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gerhard Weber
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Gollasch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Qin Gao

  2. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jia Zhou

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Gollasch, D., Weber, G. (2023). What to Do Next? An Activity Scheduling Schema for Social Assistance Robots for Older Adults. In: Gao, Q., Zhou, J. (eds) Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14043. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34917-1_21

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34917-1_21

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-34916-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-34917-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation