Acceptance and Attitudes Toward a Human-like Socially Assistive Robot by Older Adults

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that cognitive and social interventions are crucial to the overall health of older adults including their psychological, cognitive, and physical well-being. However, due to the rapidly growing elderly population of the world, the resources and people to provide these interventions is lacking. Our work focuses on the use of social robotic technologies to provide person-centered cognitive interventions. In this article, we investigate the acceptance and attitudes of older adults toward the human-like expressive socially assistive robot Brian 2.1 in order to determine if the robot’s human-like assistive and social characteristics would promote the use of the robot as a cognitive and social interaction tool to aid with activities of daily living. The results of a robot acceptance questionnaire administered during a robot demonstration session with a group of 46 elderly adults showed that the majority of the individuals had positive attitudes toward the socially assistive robot and its intended applications.

Keywords:

• cognitive and social interventions
• older adults
• robot acceptance
• socially assistive robots

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the seniors association for their assistance in this work.

Funding

This research was partly funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program.