Acceptance and Long-Term Use of a Social Robot by Elderly Users in a Domestic Environment

This paper describes the evaluation of human-robot-interaction (HRI) related to the future use of a humanoid robotic system as a tool supporting the care for an independently living elderly person with MCI. The core motivation was to summarize user experience that was gained during the tests of socially assistive robot in domestic trials. To what extend older users acceptance and use of the autonomous robot is the central research topic covered in this paper. To evaluate this problem user validation was performed together with 5 older people in their own homes during 10 weeks of trials. Detailed results covering user acceptance, their attitude towards the robot, perception of the robot and scores regarding the naturalness, animacy and intelligence of the tested system were measured using The Godspeed and the Almere questionnaire. The results show high acceptance of the robot in the context of perceived enjoyment, perceived ease of use, trust and social influence. What shows that elderly users may be open to the facilitating technologies.