Perspectives on usability and accessibility of an autonomous humanoid robot living with elderly people

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this study was to assess how cohabitation with a social robot for seven days night and day is perceived by elderly potential users and to suggest technological improvements for future home integration.

Methods

Fifteen participants were invited to interact with Pepper^®, 24 h a day and 7 days a week. Perceived utility assessment was achieved using a dedicated questionnaire. Usability assessment was carried out by measuring satisfaction with the human-robot interaction and listing malfunctions.

Results

Seventy-eight tasks out of 115 tasks were reported respectively as very high and high. On day 1, satisfaction was at its higher level with a mean of 6.8. On day 8, it maintained at 6.0 despite technical malfunctions and failures, listed with details in this paper. Acceptability was positive. Pepper was mainly considered as an assistant and a link with family and friends and never as an enemy or intruder. Pepper has proven to be potentially able to meet five needs: making the person’s environment safe by alerting contact persons, reminding the user of health-related tasks, enabling “doubt removal”, maintaining social relationships and following the user.

Conclusions

Pepper is more than a “demonstration” device classified as level 6 of the nine-point Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale for the hard and software and level 5 in behavioural terms. Once the technological locks and malfunctions have been overcome, Pepper should be applicable in the home, allowing users to test it in a more familiar environment.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Pepper, a humanoid robot, has been perceived as rich in potentialities that can help and secure a fragile person.

• Following this experience of cohabitation with a humanoid robot, the participants were unanimous in thinking that assistive robotics is the future.

• To be useful, the robot’s people tracking function must inevitably be improved.

• Pepper, the first humanoid robot ever marketed, is more than just a “demonstration”device, classified at level 6 of Technological Readiness Levels (TRL) for supporting hardware and software and level 5 in terms of behavior.

Keywords:

• Socially assistive robot
• frailty
• social support
• acceptance
• elderly people

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to M Busy, E Lagrue, JM Montanier, A Mazel, R Gelin, the engineers who participated to the development and adaptation of the applications implemented in Pepper. We also thank Mrs Catherine Stott for her valuable translation.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the French Public Investment Bank BpiFrance.