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What Do Older People Actually Want from Their Robots?

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Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP 2020)

Abstract

There has been a lot of research concerning robots to support older people. However, there may be some areas of robots for older people that have not been as heavily researched or that is being missed. This study aimed to reassess if existing research is addressing the needs of 22 older people and asked them “without being concerned about any limitations, what would you want from a robot?” The study also showed them pictures of different robot types and asked them which type, if any, they would prefer. It was found that the older people have a lot of daily tasks and needs that are not addressed by current research. It was also found that older people were generally intimated by humanoid robots and are concerned about their privacy with voice agents but do not have a specific preference otherwise.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all our participants for taking the time to participate in our study. Their feedback has been extremely valuable in our ongoing work with robots for older people.

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Correspondence to Sanjit Samaddar .

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Samaddar, S., Petrie, H. (2020). What Do Older People Actually Want from Their Robots?. In: Miesenberger, K., Manduchi, R., Covarrubias Rodriguez, M., Peňáz, P. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12376. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58796-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58796-3_3

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58795-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58796-3

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