Designing a Socially Assistive Robot to Support Older Adults with Low Vision
Abstract
Socially assistive robots (SARs) have shown great promise in supplementing and augmenting interventions to support the physical and mental well-being of older adults. However, past work has not yet explored the potential of applying SAR to lower the barriers of long-term low vision rehabilitation (LVR) interventions for older adults. In this work, we present a user-informed design process to validate the motivation and identify major design principles for developing SAR for long-term LVR. To evaluate user-perceived usefulness and acceptance of SAR in this novel domain, we performed a two-phase study through user surveys. First, a group (n=38) of older adults with LV completed a mailed-in survey. Next, a new group (n=13) of older adults with LV saw an in-clinic SAR demo and then completed the survey. The study participants reported that SARs would be useful, trustworthy, easy to use, and enjoyable while providing socio-emotional support to augment LVR interventions. The in-clinic demo group reported significantly more positive opinions of the SAR's capabilities than did the baseline survey group that used mailed-in forms without the SAR demo.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2401.03329,
title = {Designing a Socially Assistive Robot to Support Older Adults with Low Vision},
author = {Emily Zhou and Zhonghao Shi and Xiaoyang Qiao and Maja J Matarić and Ava K Bittner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.03329},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Published in Social Robotics: 13th International Conference, ICSR 2021. Springer International Publishing