Humanoid Robot

Technological malfunction often limit research done into similar robots. Most trials have to remove tests or require experiments to do real-time repairs on the robot. Although this is common in healthcare, this is a limitation for dementia care since those robots need to work fully autonomously due the familiarity gap of the users. Typically errors were most common in papers with facial recognition, voice recognition, image recall and conversational utility (Daniel Woods et al)

Daniel Woods, Fengpei Yuan, Ying-Ling Jao, and Xiaopeng Zhao. 2021. Social Robots for Older Adults with Dementia: A Narrative Review on Challenges & Future Directions. In Social Robotics: 13th International Conference, ICSR 2021, Singapore, Singapore,  November 10–13, 2021, Proceedings. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 411–420. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_35

In this study the same survey was repeated twice. The survey first measured the prior experience with technology and the Unified Theory and Use of Technology. The first part the participants rated their own experiences with smart technology from a scale from no to expert. The UTUAT measures general attitudes towards technology. It specifically measures: Anxiety, Attitude Towards Technology, Perceived Enjoyment, Perceived Sociability, Perceived Usefulness, Social Influence and Trust.  (Lizzy et al, 2019)

Lizzy Sinnema and Maryam Alimardani. 2019. The Attitude of Elderly and Young Adults Towards a Humanoid Robot as a Facilitator for Social Interaction. In Social Robotics: 11th International Conference, ICSR 2019, Madrid, Spain, November 26–29, 2019, Proceedings. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 24–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35888-4_3"

​​​​​​One of the primary problems in care homes is the feeling in lonely in elderly. Social interaction is an important method to reduce loneliness, but is hard to achieve in care homes. Animal robots have shown promise in this area, however lack the depth of real conversation. On the other hand, for that level of Human-Robot Interaction much more complicated natural language processing, text-to-speech and dialogue management technologies must be created than the current state of the art. Robots should not replace human care, however and instead augment it. 

This study measures the attitude of young and old people towards the Nao social robot. It had 65 Dutch participants of which 24 where seniors and 28 students.  The goal of the robot interactions was to increase interaction of participants between each other, this is done by the robot introducing a puzzle and only further engaging if they asked for a hint or repeat the riddle. 

For both groups the level of anxiety has gone down significantly. Elderly perceived the robot as similarly useful, while students saw it as less useful. This could be explained by a different set of needs: elderly expect a robot to perform more communicative tasks while young adults prefer a robot that does physical tasks. Elderly are typically positive about the interaction had with the robot. All participants felt comfortable with each other participating in the experiment. Elderly preferred one-on-one interactions and wanted continued interaction with the robot. After the experiment concluded participants continued conversations about robots or similar topics indicating that social robots may be a useful tool in augmenting human conversation rather than replacing it

Lizzy Sinnema and Maryam Alimardani. 2019. The Attitude of Elderly and Young Adults Towards a Humanoid Robot as a Facilitator for Social Interaction. In Social Robotics: 11th International Conference, ICSR 2019, Madrid, Spain, November 26–29, 2019, Proceedings. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 24–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35888-4_3

In the period 2018-2020 there has been an increase of 46% exists to use smaller, less complicate and stationary robots compared to 2000-2018. Such robots are easier to deploy in the real-world and come at a lower cost making them more accessible. Research also has indicated that patients find smaller, static robots less threating since they are seen less as an obstacle or privacy risk. Usage of a LCD screen allows for customization, adaptability, accessbiltiy and cultural transations. LCD screen also allow for integrations of other features (ex. teleconferencing, reminders and touch input). The ability to display visualization of speech has been argued for as an essential future to avoid misunderstandings. Another interface that could be used are voice assistants such as Alexa or Siri since these are much more available than large robots like Pepper or Nao. These are limited to task-only agents for specific scenarios and have not yet proven reliable in the field. Another relevant factor is the time to respond which for these agents are rather high (8s for Alexa), while for elderly these times should be able dynamically change. They also should be able to handle pauses, interruptions, ways to recover the conversation and affirmations. It should be noted that >80% of Alzheimer's patients suffer from confusion due to speech.

• M. R. Lima et al., "Conversational Affective Social Robots for Ageing and Dementia Support," in IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 1378-1397, Dec. 2022, doi: 10.1109/TCDS.2021.3115228.