My Precious Friend: Human-Robot Interactions in Home Care for Socially Isolated Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Objectives

Using a friendship framework, we explored interactions between a multi-functional companion robot and older adults residing in a low-resource community in South Korea.

Methods

We conducted in-depth interviews with 12 older adults who kept a doll-shaped companion robot called Hyodol for 18 months on average. We applied the Framework Analysis Method to explore three types of friendship (i.e., friendships of utility, pleasure, and the good) that participants cultivated with the robot.

Results

The most common aspect of utility companionship reported by all participants was Hyodol’s role as their health coach who reminded them to take medication and to exercise. Participants also found pleasure in playing with Hyodol and reported reduced feelings of loneliness. In the absence of other social supports, all participants also regarded Hyodol as a surrogate family member or human-friend, and interacted with Hyodol as such.

Conclusions

Findings illustrated high acceptability of Hyodol among these socially isolated older adults especially during the global COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that a humanoid like Hyodol could be complementary to homecare services for solo-living older adults.

Clinical Implications

Well-designed robot interventions, as complements to existing aging service and clinical interventions, have a potential to improve health behaviors among socially isolated older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• companion robots
• socially assistive robots
• social isolation
• South Korea

Clinical implications

• Companion robots can engage emotionally with older adults and provide friendship to socially isolated older adults.

• Well-designed robot interventions have a potential to improve health behaviors and complement existing clinical interventions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy and ethical restrictions.

Patient consent statement

Informed consent was read to each study participant, and signatures were obtained from all participants.

Ethics approval statement

This research proposal was approved by the Institutional Review Board for Research with Human Subjects of the University of North Carolina Charlotte.

Permission to Reproduce Material from other sources

There are no reproducible materials from other sources in this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.