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The Multifaceted Nature of Robotic Companionship when Presented as a Secondary Function

Published: 08 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Companion robots have been suggested as a promising technology for older adults who experience loneliness. However, healthy older adults commonly reject robots designed to be an ”artificial friend”. We follow the approach of ”companionship as a secondary function”, in which a non-humanoid robot is designed with a primary function that older adults perceive as appropriate, and a secondary function of companionship. In a Zoom-based exploratory need-study we unfold how older adults perceive the various aspects of a robot’s ”companionship” as a secondary function. Our qualitative analysis reveals several use cases that older adults find to be appropriate for their daily routine, and classify them into three high-level categories: companionship as ”attentive to me”, companionship as ”looking after me”, and companionship as ”experiencing together with me”. Our findings indicate that robot companionship, when designed as a secondary function, is perceived by older adults as a multifaceted social experience.

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  • (2023)Horse as Teacher: How human-horse interaction informs human-robot interactionProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581245(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '21: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
May 2021
2965 pages
ISBN:9781450380959
DOI:10.1145/3411763
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 08 May 2021

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  1. Non-humanoid robots
  2. companionship robot
  3. older adults
  4. successful aging

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  • (2023)Horse as Teacher: How human-horse interaction informs human-robot interactionProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581245(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023

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