A Mobile Social Hand Disinfection Robot for Use in Hospitals

Prevention of infectious diseases as the Covid-19 is of essential importance for the well-being of humanity. This is especially so at hospitals, where many vulnerable individuals frequent. Hand disinfection is one of the methods for preventing communicable diseases. In this paper we introduce a new modular mobile service robot designed for hand disinfection in hospitals and other public spaces. It consists of two separable parts: the driving base and the disinfection stand. The base was made in a horseshoe shape which allows it to lift its payload (the stand) near its center of gravity and distribute the weight evenly on its four wheels. The stand is able to function both in conjunction with the base and also autonomously. The whole robot was designed with social interaction in mind to achieve better hand sanitization compliance, which is of essential importance in hospitals for preventing infectious diseases. We conducted a test of how well the robot is able to find and approach people in its vicinity who face different directions. Even though the robot does not achieve its goal position ideally, it always ends up facing the user, which is even more important for starting an interaction than reaching its goal position very precisely. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Combining Cultural Probes and Interviews with Caregivers to Co-Design a Social Mobile Robotic Solution

Objectives: The objective of our research is to study the social organization within institutions welcoming dependent older adults and the potential impact of introducing a social robot. Material(s) and Method(s): In a co-design approach with professionals, the observation of behaviors, regulated by social rules and norms, will allow, in a way coherent with our empirical approach, to question the conditions necessary for the design of an acceptable human-robot interaction. The ethnographic observations, which were cancelled due to the Covid crisis, led us to use the "cultural probes" method combined with interviews, to understand the daily work of health professionals better. Result(s): The analysis of the collected data allows us to identify 5 recurrent themes - Time and personnel, the health situation,1 Communication/Attention, Guiding, Activities - for which we have listed, in this article, the issues encountered, the questions raised and ideas of potential solutions with the use of a social robot. Conclusion(s): The Cultural Probes approach may seem time-consuming and requires a significant investment, but it has allowed us to maintain regular contact during the pandemic. In addition, the qualitative data collected proved to be a good discussion tool.Copyright © 2022 AGBM

A New Study of Integration Between Social Robotic Systems and the Metaverse for Dealing with Healthcare in the Post-COVID-19 Situations

With the popularity of the metaverse, researchers are turning to augmented reality and virtual reality to innovate their recent pain points, particularly healthcare issues during COVID-19. At the same time, social robots can be a great tool for alleviating many challenges during the pandemic. However, before the integrated technology's possibilities for the metaverse and social robots can be suitably harnessed, certain recent developments for integration during the pandemic should be addressed. For this reason, this paper proposes a new systematic summary of pioneering social robotic systems using the metaverse through immersive experiences from an interdisciplinary healthcare perspective during the COVID-19 outbreak. We also highlight social robots to deal with medical healthcare issues during the virus outbreak both elderly adults and younger people. Moreover, we compare recent metaverse-driven social robotic works for dealing with assisted living and healthcare issues through telepresence and remote interaction during COVID-19. Ultimately, we provide a recommendation and forecast a future scenario for the integration between socially interactive robots and metaverse technology to improve and help the quality of life both in the current COVID-19 situation and in the post-COVID-19 society. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

SanitizerBot: How Human-in-the-Loop Social Robots Can Playfully Support Humans

This paper evaluates a robot that distributed hand-sanitizer over an eight month period (October 2020-June 2021) in public places on the Oregon State University campus. During COVID times, many robots have been deployed in public places as social distancing enforcers, food delivery robots, UV-sanitation robots and more, but few studies have assessed the social situations of these robots. Using the context of robot distributing hand sanitizer, this work explores the benefits that social robots may provide to encouraging healthy human activities, as well as ways in which street-performance inspired approaches and a bit of humor might improve the quality and experience of functional human-robot interactions. After gaining human-in-the-loop deployment experience with a customized interface to enable both planned and improvized responses to human bystanders, we run two sub-studies. In the first, we compare the performance of the robot (moving or still) relative to a traditional hand sanitizer dispenser stick (N=2048, 3 week data collection period). In the second, we evaluate how varied utterance strategies further impact the interaction results (N=185, 2 week data collection period). The robot dramatically outperforms the stick dispenser across all tracked behavioral variables, cuing high levels of positive social engagement. This work finds the utterance design is more complex socially, and offer insights to future robot designers about how to integrate helpful and playful speech into service robot interactions. Finally, across both sub-studies, the work shows that people in groups are more likely to engage with the robot and each other, as well as sanitize their hands. © 2022 IEEE.

Innovazioni in psicologia della salute: il contributo della Social Assistive Robotics. Tra opportunità terapeutiche e questioni aperte della robotica sociale

If progress is synonymous with Artificial Intelligence, then social robotics represents a field that has gained growing interest in recent years, especially for its potential applications in the assistance and healthcare system. As a direct consequence of multiple socio-demographic factors, including the global increase in the elderly population, the need to enhance and update the therapeutical tools available, and the growing advances in technology, the research on the presented subject is receiving greater attention that the Covid-19 pandemic has only amplified further. In this context of interest, this article aims to point out the contribution of social robotics, more specifically of assistive robotics, for the elderly population. To this end, an overview of the most recent applications of this technology is proposed, starting with the analysis of its applications both in the clinical setting with psychiatric and neurodegenerative pathologies and in a private one as an opportunity to support the user's autonomy in daily life. In conclusion, the potential psychological-relational implications of social robotics and simulated affectivity are enlighted and discussed through the analysis of the user's self-deception. © 2022 Franco Angeli Edizioni. All rights reserved.

Combining Cultural Probes and Interviews with Caregivers to Co-Design a Social Mobile Robotic Solution

Objectives The objective of our research is to study the social organization within institutions welcoming dependent older adults and the potential impact of introducing a social robot. Materials and methods In a co-design approach with professionals, the observation of behaviors, regulated by social rules and norms, will allow, in a way coherent with our empirical approach, to question the conditions necessary for the design of an acceptable human–robot interaction. The ethnographic observations, which were cancelled due to the Covid crisis, led us to use the “cultural probes” method combined with interviews, to understand the daily work of health professionals better. Results The analysis of the collected data allows us to identify 5 recurrent themes – Time and personnel, the health situation,1 Communication/Attention, Guiding, Activities – for which we have listed, in this article, the issues encountered, the questions raised and ideas of potential solutions with the use of a social robot. Conclusion The Cultural Probes approach may seem time-consuming and requires a significant investment, but it has allowed us to maintain regular contact during the pandemic. In addition, the qualitative data collected proved to be a good discussion tool.

Adapting 'sunshine,' a socially assistive chat robot for older adults with cognitive impairment: A pilot study

This reprinted chapter originally appeared in Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 2020, 63[6-7], 520-528. (The following of the original article appeared in record 2020-51139-001.) The COVID-19 pandemic challenges us to think outside of the box to respond to this unprecedented global crisis. In this letter, we propose a pilot study to use a socially assistive robot to help meet social needs for older adults with cognitive impairment residing in long-term care facilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)