Human Robot Engagement and Acceptability in Residential Aged Care

ABSTRACT People with dementia often suffer the limitation in their ability to communicate and express themselves clearly, consequently spend most of their time alone, and are not engaged in social activity as before. The prolonged lack of engagement has contributed to a variety of negative health effects. The research on engagement and acceptability of people with dementia using assistive technology such as social robots can be useful to provide potential solutions and sustainability. Thus, this article focuses on the service design and the effectiveness of the engagement and acceptability while interacting with a social robot named Matilda being trialed from 2010 until 2013 with 115 participants in Australian residential aged care facilities. Combining the most updated engagement assessment method and the robot acceptance model as the methodology, the findings of this study indicate there is a statistically significant improvement in emotional, visual, and behavioral engagement of older people with social robots over the years. The post-trial survey has also verified their acceptance in the interaction with social robots.