Implementation and user acceptance of social service robot for an elderly care program in a daycare facility

• Published in: Journal of ambient intelligence and humanized computing Vol. 14; no. 11; pp. 14423 - 14432
• Main Authors: Takanokura, Masato, Kurashima, Ren, Ohhira, Tsubasa, Kawahara, Yoshihiro, Ogiya, Mitsuharu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.11.2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aging; Artificial Intelligence; Attitudes; Cognitive tasks; Communication; Computational Intelligence; Elder care; Engineering; Exercise; Health care; Health services; Interactive computer systems; Medical personnel; Older people; Original Research; Quality of life; Rehabilitation; Robotics; Robotics and Automation; Robots; Service robots; Social services; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction; Voice control; Workers; Workloads; Japan; Finland; Brain training with arithmetic operations; Elderly care; Acceptability; Human factors; Diversity; Exercise with cognitive tasks
• ISSN: 1868-5137; 1868-5145
• DOI: 10.1007/s12652-020-02871-6

A social service robot in elderly care is capable of improving the quality of life of the elderly and simultaneously reducing the workload of healthcare workers. It can have positive and negative effects in terms of the social and technical contexts of healthcare services. This study aims to implement a social service robot in elderly care programs and investigate user acceptance at daycare facilities. A robot was installed at a facility for use in two types of care programs: exercise with cognitive tasks and brain training with arithmetic operations. A questionnaire survey was conducted to estimate the overall impressions and attitudes of elderly users and healthcare workers toward the installation of the robot in elderly care. The results indicated that the care program using the robot was effective, but its efficiency was not relatively high at this facility. The effectiveness of the care program depended considerably on the different capabilities of the elderly users. This issue arose from the diverse capabilities and varying attitudes of acceptance of the elderly users toward the technology. Technical improvements can solve the former issue so that the healthcare worker can more easily adjust robot functions, such as voice control. The latter issue can be improved by establishing better human–robot interaction in the context of daily programs at daycare facilities. Adoption of such robotic services should be considered in the social contexts of elderly care.