Getting acquainted: First steps for child-robot relationship formation.

In this article we discuss two studies of children getting acquainted with an autonomous socially assistive robot. The success of the first encounter is key for a sustainable long-term supportive relationship. We provide four validated behavior design elements that enable the robot to robustly get acquainted with the child. The first are five conversational patterns that allow children to comfortably self-disclose to the robot. The second is a reciprocation strategy that enables the robot to adequately respond to the children's self-disclosures. The third is a 'how to talk to me' tutorial. The fourth is a personality profile for the robot that creates more rapport and comfort between the child and the robot. The designs were validated with two user studies (N 1 = 30, N 2 = 75, 8-11 years. o. children). The results furthermore showed similarities between how children form relationships with people and how children form relationships with robots. Most importantly, self-disclosure, and specifically how intimate the self-disclosures are, is an important predictor for the success of child-robot relationship formation. Speech recognition errors reduces the intimacy and feeling similar to the robot increases the intimacy of self-disclosures.

Interactive Education on Sleep Hygiene with a Social Robot at a Pediatric Oncology Outpatient Clinic: Feasibility, Experiences, and Preliminary Effectiveness.

OBJECTIVES: Children with cancer often experience sleep problems, which are associated with many negative physical and psychological health outcomes, as well as with a lower quality of life. Therefore, interventions are strongly required to improve sleep in this population. We evaluated interactive education with respect to sleep hygiene with a social robot at a pediatric oncology outpatient clinic regarding the feasibility, experiences, and preliminary effectiveness. METHODS: Researchers approached children (8 to 12 years old) who were receiving anticancer treatment and who were visiting the outpatient clinic with their parents during the two-week study period. The researchers completed observation forms regarding feasibility, and parents completed the Children's Sleep Hygiene Scale before and two weeks after the educational regimen. The experiences of children and parents were evaluated in semi-structured interviews. We analyzed open answers by labeling each answer with a topic reflecting the content and collapsed these topics into categories. We used descriptive statistics to describe the feasibility and experiences, and a dependent-samples t-test to evaluate the preliminary effectiveness. RESULTS: Twenty-eight families participated (58% response rate) and all interactions with the robot were completed. The children and parents reported that they learned something new (75% and 50%, respectively), that they wanted to learn from the robot more often (83% and 75%, respectively), and that they applied the sleeping tips from the robot afterwards at home (54%). Regarding the preliminary effectiveness, children showed a statistically significant improvement in their sleep hygiene (p = 0.047, d = 0.39). CONCLUSIONS: Providing an educational regimen on sleep hygiene in a novel, interactive way by using a social robot at the outpatient clinic seemed feasible, and the children and parents mostly exhibited positive reactions. We found preliminary evidence that the sleep hygiene of children with cancer improved.

Who Wants to Grant Robots Rights?

The robot rights debate has thus far proceeded without any reliable data concerning the public opinion about robots and the rights they should have. We have administered an online survey (n = 439) that investigates layman's attitudes toward granting particular rights to robots. Furthermore, we have asked them the reasons for their willingness to grant them those rights. Finally, we have administered general perceptions of robots regarding appearance, capacities, and traits. Results show that rights can be divided in sociopolitical and robot dimensions. Reasons can be distinguished along cognition and compassion dimensions. People generally have a positive view about robot interaction capacities. We found that people are more willing to grant basic robot rights such as access to energy and the right to update to robots than sociopolitical rights such as voting rights and the right to own property. Attitudes toward granting rights to robots depend on the cognitive and affective capacities people believe robots possess or will possess in the future. Our results suggest that the robot rights debate stands to benefit greatly from a common understanding of the capacity potentials of future robots.

Quality of Care Perceived by Older Patients and Caregivers in Integrated Care Pathways With Interviewing Assistance From a Social Robot: Noninferiority Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND: Society is facing a global shortage of 17 million health care workers, along with increasing health care demands from a growing number of older adults. Social robots are being considered as solutions to part of this problem. OBJECTIVE: Our objective is to evaluate the quality of care perceived by patients and caregivers for an integrated care pathway in an outpatient clinic using a social robot for patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) interviews versus the currently used professional interviews. METHODS: A multicenter, two-parallel-group, nonblinded, randomized controlled trial was used to test for noninferiority of the quality of care delivered through robot-assisted care. The randomization was performed using a computer-generated table. The setting consisted of two outpatient clinics, and the study took place from July to December 2019. Of 419 patients who visited the participating outpatient clinics, 110 older patients met the criteria for recruitment. Inclusion criteria were the ability to speak and read Dutch and being assisted by a participating health care professional. Exclusion criteria were serious hearing or vision problems, serious cognitive problems, and paranoia or similar psychiatric problems. The intervention consisted of a social robot conducting a 36-item PROM. As the main outcome measure, the customized Consumer Quality Index (CQI) was used, as reported by patients and caregivers for the outpatient pathway of care. RESULTS: In total, 75 intermediately frail older patients were included in the study, randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups, and processed: 36 female (48%) and 39 male (52%); mean age 77.4 years (SD 7.3), range 60-91 years. There was no significant difference in the total patient CQI scores between the patients included in the robot-assisted care pathway (mean 9.27, SD 0.65, n=37) and those in the control group (mean 9.00, SD 0.70, n=38): P=.08, 95% CI -0.04 to 0.58. There was no significant difference in the total CQI scores between caregivers in the intervention group (mean 9.21, SD 0.76, n=30) and those in the control group (mean 9.09, SD 0.60, n=35): P=.47, 95% CI -0.21 to 0.46. No harm or unintended effects occurred. CONCLUSIONS: Geriatric patients and their informal caregivers valued robot-assisted and nonrobot-assisted care pathways equally. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03857789; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03857789.

Robot for health data acquisition among older adults: a pilot randomised controlled cross-over trial.

BACKGROUND /OBJECTIVES: Healthcare professionals (HCP) are confronted with an increased demand for assessments of important health status measures, such as patient-reported outcome measurements (PROM), and the time this requires. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and acceptability of using an HCP robot assistant, and to test the hypothesis that a robot can autonomously acquire PROM data from older adults. DESIGN: A pilot randomised controlled cross-over study where a social robot and a nurse administered three PROM questionnaires with a total of 52 questions. SETTING: A clinical outpatient setting with community-dwelling older adults. PARTICIPANTS: Forty-two community-dwelling older adults (mean age: 77.1 years, SD: 5.7 years, 45% female). MEASUREMENTS: The primary outcome was the task time required for robot-patient and nurse-patient interactions. Secondary outcomes were the similarity of the data and the percentage of robot interactions completed autonomously. The questionnaires resulted in two values (robot and nurse) for three indexes of frailty, well-being and resilience. The data similarity was determined by comparing these index values using Bland-Altman plots, Cohen's kappa (κ) and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). Acceptability was assessed using questionnaires. RESULTS: The mean robot interview duration was 16.57 min (SD=1.53 min), which was not significantly longer than the nurse interviews (14.92 min, SD=8.47 min; p=0.19). The three Bland-Altman plots showed moderate to substantial agreement between the frailty, well-being and resilience scores (κ=0.61, 0.50 and 0.45, and ICC=0.79, 0.86 and 0.66, respectively). The robot autonomously completed 39 of 42 interviews (92.8%). CONCLUSION: Social robots may effectively and acceptably assist HCPs by interviewing older adults.