•This study recruited four types of stakeholders of socially assisted robots for interviews.•The COM-B model can be used to provide a comprehensive explanation of the factors that influence older ...adults' acceptance of socially assistive robots.•High level of technological familiarity, strong interest in new things, and perceived convenience and usefulness are facilitators.•Insufficient technical experience and low levels of education, concerns about the reliability and ease of use of the technology, inability to establish an emotional connection, insufficient policy support and economic capacity, and technical problems are barriers.
This study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to older adults' acceptance of socially assistive robots from a stakeholder perspective. We enlisted 36 distinct stakeholders, including older adult, nurses, retirement home managers, and employees from robotics companies. Data collection was conducted through semi-structured interviews. The research findings were mapped onto the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation-Behavior (COM-B) model. We obtained a total of 14 facilitators and barriers. (1) Capability: High technological familiarity (Facilitator); insufficient technical experience and low level of education (Barriers). (2) Motivation: Strong interest in new things, perceived convenience usefulness, and emotional support (Facilitators); concerns about technical reliability, perceived lack of ease of use, inability to establish emotional connection, and low level of need (Barriers). (3) Opportunity: Insufficient policy support and economic capacity, robotics technical problems (Barriers). Collaborative efforts among stakeholders are vital for fostering an environment conducive to socially assistive robot adoption, maximizing its potential to improve older adults' well-being.
Children with cerebral palsy have difficulty to sit, stand, walk, run and jump independently. Therapy is an important factor in improving these aspects, and if applied in early intervention ...treatments, when the child is growing, it could have many benefits. These therapies require intensive and extended sessions, which in turn demand dedication and effort. New strategies that provide interesting and motivating interventions are often incorporated to improve the participation and performance of the children in the therapies. Therapies using social assistive robots can be alternative and complementary methods to promote the participation and motivation of children with cerebral palsy.
The objective of this work is to validate the effectiveness of a 16-session physical therapy program to improve the participation and fulfillment of therapeutic objectives on an 8 year-old boy with dyskinetic cerebral palsy for motor learning to walk using a social assistive robot. The therapy program was carried out through a methodological proposal that uses SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed), Goal-Directed Therapy (GDT) and its evaluation through Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS).
A NAO robot was used as a social assistive robot to support a physical therapy for a child with cerebral palsy. In this work, it was observed that the motivation generated by the interaction with the social assistive robot facilitated the persistence in the walking and the fulfillment of the objectives.
Using humanoid robots as social assistive robots may benefit therapeutic processes on children with motor disabilities. The methodology developed provides a formal way to achieve objectives in therapeutic processes for children with cerebral palsy.Implications for rehabilitationIt requires researchers to conduct more studies to validate the potential of the use of social robots in therapeutic interventions that promote development in children with motor disabilities, such as cerebral palsy.Promoting the use of new technologies in therapeutic processes such as humanoid robots allows us to create new strategies to know the impact of this technology in the area of rehabilitation.The use of formal methodologies focused on the patient, along with multidisciplinary teams, could increase the possibilities of using social robots to improve cognitive and motor outcomes in children with cerebral palsy.The formulation of SMART objectives and their quantification through the GAS scale can be used as recommendations to improve the formulation of goals in therapeutic interventions for children with cerebral palsy.
We illustrate a system performing multimodal human emotion detection from video input through the integration of audio emotional recognition, text emotional recognition, facial emotional recognition, ...and emotional recognition from a spectrogram. The outcomes of the four emotion recognition modalities are compared, and a final evaluation provides the most likely perceived emotion. The system has been designed to be easily implemented on cheap mini-computer based boards. It is conceived to be used as auxiliary tool in the field of telemedicine to remotely monitor the mood of patients and observe their healing process, which is closely related to their emotional condition.
Social Robots are used in different contexts and, in healthcare, they are better known as Socially Assistive Robots. In the context of asthma, the use of Socially Assistive Robots has the potential ...to increase motivation and engagement to treatment. Other positive roles proposed for Socially Assistive Robots are to provide education, training regarding treatments, and feedback to patients. This review evaluates emerging interventions for improving treatment adherence in pediatric asthma, focusing on the possible future role of social robots in the clinical practice.
•Spatial/social presence used to gamify cognitive training for young and old adults.•Immersive-VR training (spatial) preferred over training with a robot (social).•Preferences for VR-training over ...robot-training did not correlate with age or gender.•Results contrast with previous works on the value of physical embodiment.
Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) and immersive Virtual Reality (iVR) are interactive platforms that promote user engagement, which can motivate users to adhere to therapeutic frameworks. SARs use social presence to create affective relationships with users, leveraging the human tendency to be driven by social interactions. iVR uses spatial presence to provide an intense multisensory experience that submerges users in a virtual world. We adapted two such platforms – a SAR and an iVR – to deliver cognitive training (CT), by integrating established cognitive tasks in gamified environments that convey a strong sense of presence. Sixty-four participants underwent CT with both platforms. We tested: (1) their perception of both platforms; (2) whether they preferred one over the other in the short term; (3) their projected preferences for long-term training; and (4) whether their preferences correlated with personal characteristics. They preferred the virtual experience in the short term across age and gender. For long-term CT, there was equal projected preference for both platforms. It may be that a combination of social and spatial presence might yield engagement in long-term training.
Research and development in socially assistive robotics have produced several novel applications in the care of senior people. However, some are still unexplored such as their use as psychometric ...tools allowing for a quick and dependable evaluation of human users’ intellectual capacity. To fully exploit the application of a social robot as a psychometric tool, it is necessary to account for the users’ factors that might influence the interaction with a robot and the evaluation of user cognitive performance. To this end, we invited senior participants to use a prototype of a robot-led cognitive test and analyzed the influence of personality traits and user’s empathy on the cognitive performance and technology acceptance. Results show a positive influence of a personality trait, the “openness to experience”, on the human-robot interaction, and that other factors, such as anxiety, trust, and intention to use, are influencing technology acceptance and correlate the evaluation by psychometric tests.
When used as an interface in the context of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), a social robot should not just provide a task-oriented support. It should also try to establish a social empathic relation ...with the user. To this aim, it is crucial to endow the robot with the capability of recognizing the user’s affective state and reason on it for triggering the most appropriate communicative behavior. In this paper we describe how such an affective reasoning has been implemented in the NAO robot for simulating empathic behaviors in the context of AAL. In particular, the robot is able to recognize the emotion of the user by analyzing communicative signals extracted from speech and facial expressions. The recognized emotion allows triggering the robot’s affective state and, consequently, the most appropriate empathic behavior. The robot’s empathic behaviors have been evaluated both by experts in communication and through a user study aimed at assessing the perception and interpretation of empathy by elderly users. Results are quite satisfactory and encourage us to further extend the social and affective capabilities of the robot.
Irruption of technologies in the educational context, specifically robotics has meant changes in the use of learning tools for students with ASD. In this sense, the inclusion of robots in ...intervention with these students allowed to design simpler and more controlled learning environments, adjusted to the needs of these students. From this line of research, the main of this study has been to realize a systematic and thematic review providing a state-of-art review about the use of robots as a tool for social interaction with ASD students using some variables such as instrument, features of the participants, aim of the research, results, developed activities, worked areas. Therefore, a bibliometric study has been applied through the Web of Science (WOS). The advanced search with keywords on the subject, object of study, ended with 13 publications which were adjusted to previously established criteria such as age of the participants (between 2 and 16 years), purpose of articles (academic) or the years of publication (between the years 2005 and 2017). The results have showed, according to the established variables, an evolution of the scientific production, being year 2017 the most productive and observing that, in general lines, the prototypes of recent robots have more work options. The conclusions, in line with previous studies, show that robots have been used in the intervention with children with ASD being more used and effective as a tool to promote communicative interaction while there is no evidence of intervention in curricular contents, what may indicate its effectiveness in this area and transfer future studies to other areas.
Background: Children with cerebral palsy have difficulty to sit, stand, walk, run and jump independently. Therapy is an important factor in improving these aspects, and if applied in early ...intervention treatments, when the child is growing, it could have many benefits. These therapies require intensive and extended sessions, which in turn demand dedication and effort. New strategies that provide interesting and motivating interventions are often incorporated to improve the participation and performance of the children in the therapies. Therapies using social assistive robots can be alternative and complementary methods to promote the participation and motivation of children with cerebral palsy.
Methods: The objective of this work is to validate the effectiveness of a 16-session physical therapy program to improve the participation and fulfillment of therapeutic objectives on an 8 year-old boy with dyskinetic cerebral palsy for motor learning to walk using a social assistive robot. The therapy program was carried out through a methodological proposal that uses SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed), Goal-Directed Therapy (GDT) and its evaluation through Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS). Results: A NAO robot was used as a social assistive robot to support a physical therapy for a child with cerebral palsy. In this work, it was observed that the motivation generated by the interaction with the social assistive robot facilitated the persistence in the walking and the fulfillment of the objectives. Conclusion: Using humanoid robots as social assistive robots may benefit therapeutic processes on children with motor disabilities. The methodology developed provides a formal way to achieve objectives in therapeutic processes for children with cerebral palsy.
Implications for rehabilitation
It requires researchers to conduct more studies to validate the potential of the use
of social robots in therapeutic interventions that promote development in
children with motor disabilities, such as cerebral palsy.
Promoting the use of new technologies in therapeutic processes such as humanoid robots allows us to create new strategies to know the impact of this technology in the area of rehabilitation.
The use of formal methodologies focused on the patient, along with multidisciplinary teams, could increase the possibilities of using social robots to improve cognitive and motor outcomes in children with cerebral palsy.
The formulation of SMART objectives and their quantification through the GAS scale can be used as recommendations to improve the formulation of goals in therapeutic interventions for children with cerebral palsy.
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