Leon Bodenhagen

Service robots are becoming a common sight in hospital corridors in many developed countries, but their acceptance, the factors influencing it, and potential cultural differences between countries remain unclear. To investigate this, the authors examined the use of service robots in two hospitals, one in Denmark and the other in South Korea, through an exploratory study. The analysis was performed based on retrospective data including usage parameters and a survey was conducted to assess the attitudes of healthcare personnel toward blood sample and medication delivery robots. The survey found that the staff in both hospitals were positive regarding the deployment of such robots. Additionally, the results indicate that the individualization of robots may lead to higher agency and that swift removal of technical issues at deployment might positively influence longer-term satisfaction with the robots.

We present the concept and technical realisation for a cup that moves and lights up to bring itself to the attention of a person to trigger him/her taking a sip as a response. We then reflect on different ethical dimensions connected to the application of the cup in the context of people affected by dementia and describe first tests performed in elderly care homes. The concept is aimed at people with dementia in home or resident care who still have the ability to act, but tend to mentally drift away and thus require external impulses and triggers to drink. We found out that a substantial part of the residents fulfil these conditions. The cup moves and lights up in regular intervals if it has not been picked up recently. Once it is emptied, it alerts a caregiver to refill. Moreover, the degree or level of movement and light can be configured, depending on the person’s needs and reactions. This paper describes the core idea and the technical aspects of building the prototype. Finally, primary tests were conducted with the aim to construct a protocol and structure for an extended quantitative study.

Hand disinfection is an important tool in the line of defense against infectious diseases. Hand sanitizer dispensers are usually passive devices sitting at entrances of buildings and other frequented locations. In this study we explore the usefulness of an interactive mobile hand sanitizer robot, more specifically, the research is focused on finding the most significant attention-grabbing modality for the robot to motivate people to disinfect their hands. Through an in -the-wild Wizard-of-Oz experiment and a short questionnaire each of the four usage modalities was tested in the entrance hall of a university. The results show that movement had the most significant impact, compared to sound and nothing at all, yet due to the robot's design the participants expected it to talk to them.