RESUMEN
The various crises are having a significant impact on the entire food sector and are changing the attitudes of Europeans as well as policies on the importance of food security and sustainably produced quality and safe food for consumer health. The paper focuses on the consumer's fear of food security for the time of the first wave of COVID-19 and the associated concern for food security in the future and the changes in consumer behaviour. The online survey in Slovenia was conducted in June 2020 using a "snowball" method. The sample included 490 individuals. The results showed that both measured forms of fear (i) fear over food security during the first wave of COVID-19 crisis, and (ii) fear over food security in the future were statistically significant, moderately strong and positively associated with almost all forms of self-perceived behaviour change caused by the COVID-19 crisis. The respondents focused more on buying locally produced and processed food, food stockpiling and decreasing food waste. Only minor changes were expressed with regards to their food purchasing channels, with the elderly, the highly educated and those who classified themselves in a higher social class buying more often directly from farmers. In the future, the results of this research should be compared with other countries and the impact of an individual's economic situation and the impact of promotional campaigns on agricultural products on changing consumer behaviour should also be analysed in more detail.
RESUMEN
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.