Abstract
Social robots will become ubiquitous in our everyday environments. These robots could potentially extend life expectancy, and improve the health and quality of life of an aging population. A long-term explorative study has been conducted by installing a social robot for health promotion in elderly people's own homes. Content analysis of interviews provided an in-depth understanding of the factors that influence the acceptance of and relationship-building with social robots in domestic environments. The permanent presence of a robot in users' own homes yields the vital challenges social robots encounter to be successfully accepted by their users. These vital acceptance challenges are unlikely to be revealed in one-day laboratory human-robot interaction studies or even in multiple observations of short interactions between humans and robots.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-14 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Computers in Human Behavior |
| Volume | 43 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2015 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under Grant agreement no. 231868 and project name Social Engagement with Robots and Agents (SERA). We are grateful to our partners at the University of Sheffield, University of Duisburg-Essen and Austrian Research Institute of Artificial Intelligence for their collaboration.
Keywords
- Domestic environment
- Human-robot interaction
- Long-term study
- Social robots
- User acceptance
