Floor Cleaners as Helper Pets: Projecting Assistive Robots’ Agency on Zoomorphic Affordances

  • Care of ageing adults has become a dominant field of application for assistive robot technologies, promising support for ageing adults residing in care homes and staff, in dealing with practical routine tasks and providing social and emotional relieve. A time consuming and human intensive necessity is the maintenance of high hygiene quality in care homes. Robotic vacuum cleaners have been provenCare of ageing adults has become a dominant field of application for assistive robot technologies, promising support for ageing adults residing in care homes and staff, in dealing with practical routine tasks and providing social and emotional relieve. A time consuming and human intensive necessity is the maintenance of high hygiene quality in care homes. Robotic vacuum cleaners have been proven effective for doing the job elsewhere, but—in the context of care homes—are counterproductive for residents’ well-being and do not get accepted. This is because people with dementia manifest their agency in more implicit and emotional ways, while making sense of the world around them. Starting from these premises, we explored how a zoomorphic designed vacuum cleaner could better accommodate the sensemaking of people with dementia. Our design reconceptualises robotic vacuum cleaners as a cat-like robot, referring to a playful behaviour and appearance to communicate a non-threatening and familiar role model. Data from an observational study shows that residents responded positively to our prototype, as most of them engaged playfully with it as if it was a pet or a cat-like toy, for example luring it with gestures. Some residents simply ignored the robot, indicating that it was not perceived as frightening or annoying. The level of activity influenced reactions; residents ignored our prototype if busy with other occupations, which proves that it did not cause significant disturbance. We further report results from focus group sessions with formal and informal caregivers who discussed a video prototype of our robot. Caregivers encouraged us to enhance the animal like characteristics (in behaviour and materiality) even further to result in richer interactions and provoke haptic pleasure but also pointed out that residents should not mistake the robot for a real cat.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Document Type:Article
Author: Sophie Alice GrimmeORCiD, Avgi Kollakidou, Christian Sønderskov Zarp, Prof. Dr. Eva HorneckerORCiDGND, Norbert Krüger, Phillip Graf, Emanuela Marchetti
DOI (Cite-Link):https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-023-01769-2Cite-Link
URN (Cite-Link):https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20230524-63796Cite-Link
URL:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42979-023-01769-2
Parent Title (German):SN Computer Science
Publisher:Springer
Place of publication:Singapur
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2023/05/23
Date of first Publication:2023/04/29
Release Date:2023/05/24
Publishing Institution:Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Institutes and partner institutions:Fakultät Medien / Professur Human-Computer Interaction
Volume:2023
Issue:volume 4, article 372
Pagenumber:14
First Page:1
Last Page:14
Tag:Assistive robot; Care home; Dementia
GND Keyword:Alter; Pflege; Serviceroboter; Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation
Dewey Decimal Classification:600 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften
BKL-Classification:54 Informatik / 54.80 Angewandte Informatik
Licence (German):License Logo Creative Commons 4.0 - Namensnennung (CC BY 4.0)