Test
Problem statement and research questions
People with dementia often forget to eat and drink, leading to dehydration, malnutrition and decreased wellbeing in general. Our prototype engages in discourses to remind PwD to have lunch and drink water, using the Nao robot platform. The discourse aims to reming the PwD without causing any anxiety or embarrassment which a traditional "alarm" system could cause, and keep them company throughout these activities.
RQ1: "Does the robot cause PwD to eat more regularly?"
RQ2: "Does the PwD experience less negative emotions, such as agitation, sadness, embarrassment, after the interaction with the 'intelligent' robot?"
RQ3: "Does the robot remind the PwD of their hunger?"
Method
The prototype is evaluated with an in-person experiment with multiple participants. In the experiment, the participants will be asked to pretend to be PwD and act accordingly with/without the prototype.
Participants
As there are practical difficulties with conducting the experiment with actual people with dementia due to both time constraints and COVID, our participants' group will consist of peers from other groups and friends, who will act as if they are older people with dementia. We plan to gather around 20 people for our experiments.
Experimental design
We will be using a within-subject design. In the experiment all of the participants will interact with both versions of the robot, with half of the participants interacting with the version 1 first and then version 2, and the other half in reverse order, to counter-balance the carryover effects. Snacks will be made available for the participants, in case they're prompted and they're hungry. The participants will be unaware of the possibility of eating snacks, to prevent disturbing the interaction with the robot. Otherwise the subjects could be primed for eating, which would bias the results and hide the effect of the robotic interaction.
Tasks
The participant will have to interact with the robot, which is programmed to engage in a lunch discourse. Two versions will be implemented: the first version will ask basic questions about mealtime, mostly acting as a reminder for the PwD to have lunch (alarm clock). The second will be our original implementation of it with the more sophisticated discourse and music.
Measures
We plan on measuring the effectiveness of the discourse, both physically and emotionally. Our quantitative measure is whether the person ate the lunch they were supposed to have eaten, and the qualitative measure is the emotions that the PwD experienced before, during, and after the interaction. The qualitative measures will be recorded with a simple questionnaire. Depending on the time of the experiments, we assume that people might also not be hungry enough to be prompted to have something to eat, which might disturb the results. We do plan however to measure whether the robot will remind someone of their hunger and have them eat.
Procedure
- Welcome Participants and explain what they are going to be doing.
- Have them sign the permission form.
- Participants complete a questionnaire(A) regarding their emotional state (control).
- Have version A of interaction with the robot.
- Complete questionnaire(extended version).
- Have a short interview during downtime (prepared questions).
- Have version B of interaction with the robot.
- Complete questionnaire(extended version).
- Have a short interview during downtime (prepared questions).
Material
For the experiments, we'll be using the NAO robot platform, as well as a laptop for the participants to complete the questionnaires on. The questionnaire will be a combination of questions regarding the emotional state of the participants, their interaction with the robot, and the music included in the interaction. Food will be made available to see and measure how much people will eat.