Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

The Town Crier: a Use Case Design and Implementation for a Socially Assistive Robot in Retirement Homes

Ana Iglesias
,
Raquel Viciana
ORCID logo ,
Jose Manuel Perez-Lorenzo
ORCID logo ,
Karine Lan Hing Ting
,
Alberto Tudela
,
Rebeca Marfil
,
Malak Al-Qbilat
,
Antonio Hurtado
,
Antonio Jerez
,
Juan Pedro Bandera
* ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 27 February 2024 / Approved: 27 February 2024 / Online: 28 February 2024 (03:12:51 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Iglesias, A.; Viciana, R.; Pérez-Lorenzo, J.M.; Ting, K.L.H.; Tudela, A.; Marfil, R.; Qbilat, M.; Hurtado, A.; Jerez, A.; Bandera, J.P. The Town Crier: A Use-Case Design and Implementation for a Socially Assistive Robot in Retirement Homes. Robotics 2024, 13, 61. Iglesias, A.; Viciana, R.; Pérez-Lorenzo, J.M.; Ting, K.L.H.; Tudela, A.; Marfil, R.; Qbilat, M.; Hurtado, A.; Jerez, A.; Bandera, J.P. The Town Crier: A Use-Case Design and Implementation for a Socially Assistive Robot in Retirement Homes. Robotics 2024, 13, 61.

Abstract

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.

Keywords

social robot; wellbeing; human-centred design; participatory design; human-robot interfaces

Subject

Computer Science and Mathematics, Robotics

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Download PDF

Comments (0)

We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.

Leave a public comment
Send a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
Views 0
Downloads 0
Comments 0
Metrics 0
Get PDF Cite Share 0
Bookmark BibSonomy Mendeley Reddit Delicious
×
Alerts
Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.
We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience.
Read more about our cookies here.