Karine Lan Hing Ting

The use of new assistive technologies in general, and Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) in particular, is becoming increasingly common for supporting people’s health and well-being. However, it still faces many issues regarding long-term adherence, acceptability and utility. Most of these issues are due to design processes that insufficiently take into account the needs, preferences and values of intended users. Other issues are related to the currently very limited amount of long-term evaluations, performed in real-world settings, for SARs. This study presents the results of two regional projects that consider as a starting hypothesis that the assessment in controlled environments and/or with short exposures may not be enough in the design of an SAR deployed in a retirement home and the necessity of designing for and with users. Thus, the proposed methodology has focused on use-cases definitions that follow a human-centred and participatory design approach. The main goals have been facilitating system acceptance and attachment by involving stakeholders in the robots design and evaluation, overcoming usage barriers and considering user’s needs integration. The implementation of the first use-case deployed and the two-phase pilot test performed in a retirement home are presented. In particular, a detailed description of the interface redesign process based on improving a basic prototype with users’ feedback and recommendations is presented, together with the main results of a formal evaluation that has highlighted the impact of changes and improvements addressed in the first redesign loop of the system.

The use of new assistive technologies in general, and Socially Assistive Robots (SAR) in particular is becoming increasingly common for supporting people’s health and well-being. However, it still faces many issues regarding long-term adherence, acceptability and utility. Most of these issues are due to design processes that insufficiently take into account the needs, preferences and values of intended users. Other issues are related to the currently very limited amount of long-term evaluations, performed in real world settings, for SAR. This study presents the results of two regional projects that consider as a starting hypothesis that the assessment in controlled environments and/or with short exposures may not be enough in the design of a SAR deployed in a retirement home and the necessity of designing for and with users. Thus, the proposed methodology has focused in use cases definitions that follow a human-centred and participatory design approach. The main goals have been facilitating system acceptance and attachment by involving stakeholders in the robots design and evaluation, overcoming usage barriers and considering user’s needs integration. The implementation of the first use case deployed and the two-phase pilot test performed in the retirement home are presented. In particular, a detailed description of the interface re-design process based on improving a basic prototype with users’ feedback and recommendations is presented together with main results of a formal evaluation that has highlighted the impact of changes and improvements addressed in the first redesign loop of the system.

The introduction of robots in the real world requires previous evaluation of the envisaged performance. Factors like usability, user experience, social acceptance, or societal impact, among others, have been taken into account in evaluation frameworks defined during the last years. However, one of the most important factors that need to be evaluated in any kind of interaction is whether all the users are able to work with the system with the same opportunities and easiness, and none of the current human–robot interaction (HRI) evaluation frameworks include this factor yet. This article proposes an extension of a popular HRI evaluation framework, including accessibility as a new evaluation factor. The proposed approach, named AUSUS, considers Accessibility, Usability, Social acceptance, User experience, and Societal impact. This article presents a use case of the framework, which is evaluated through a socially assistive robotic platform created to perform comprehensive geriatric assessment: the CLARC system. The details of the evaluation process in a hospital and a retirement home are reported, and the main difficulties and recommendations of using AUSUS are discussed.

Comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) is a multidimensional and multidisciplinary diagnostic instrument that helps provide personalized care to older adults by evaluating their state of health. This evaluation is based on extensive data collection in order to develop a coordinated plan to maximize overall health with aging. In the social and economic context of growing ageing populations, medical experts can save time and effort if provided with interactive tools to efficiently assist them in doing CGAs, managing either standardized tests or data collection. Recent research proposes the use of social robots as the central part of this optimization of clinicians’ time and effort. This paper presents the first and last steps of the research made around the design and evaluation of the CLARC robot: fieldwork (analysis of needs and practices concerning clinical data management) and field trials (pilot experiment in real-life conditions in a rehab hospital). Based on an extensive literature review of social robotics applications for health and ageing, it discusses the practical and methodological questions raised around how to design and test assistive social robots for clinical routine, and questions the feasibility of an automated CGA procedure.