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Robots and Human Touch in Care: Desirable and Non-desirable Robot Assistance

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11357))

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Abstract

Care robots are often seen to introduce a risk to human, touch based care. In this study, we analyze care workers’ opinions on robot assistance in elderly services and reflect them to the idea of embodied relationship between a caregiver, care receiver and technology. Our empirical data consists of a survey for professional care workers (n = 3800), including registered and practical nurses working in elderly care. The questionnaire consisted scenarios of robot assistance in care work and in elderly services and the respondents were asked to evaluate whether they see them as desirable. The care workers were significantly more approving of robot assistance in lifting heavy materials compared to moving patients. Generally, the care workers were reserved towards the idea of utilizing autonomous robots in tasks that typically involve human touch, such as assisting the elderly in the bathroom. Stressing the importance of presence and touch in human care, we apply the ideas of phenomenology of the body to understand the envisioned robot-human constellations in care work.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Jaana Parviainen, Tuuli Turja & Lina Van Aerschot

Authors
  1. Jaana Parviainen
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  2. Tuuli Turja
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  3. Lina Van Aerschot
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jaana Parviainen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  2. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  3. University Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Miguel A. Salichs

  4. Canterbury University, Auckland, New Zealand

    Elizabeth Broadbent

  5. Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Alan R. Wagner

  7. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Álvaro Castro-González

Appendix A

Appendix A

In the last section of the questionnaire there are examples of care work tasks, which could, in principle, be done with robots or done with robot assistance. Please rate every scenario by how comfortable would you feel about robot assisting you with that specific task.

1 = very uncomfortable…………………….10 = very comfortable

  • Robotic and autonomous stretcher

  • Robot moving heavy materials or large amount of goods

  • Robot assisting in moving or lifting a patient

  • Robo-power suit (exoskeleton) for a care worker to wear while moving or lifting a patient

  • Robot assisting in threatening situations

In what kind of tasks would you consider robot assistance as useful in elderly services?

1 = not at all useful……………………..….10 = very useful

  1. (a)

    Human-operated robots:

    • Assisting the elderly move around the house (i.e. lifting)

    • Escorting the elderly outside the home (i.e. going to a store)

    • Assisting in bathing and dressing up

    • Assisting in the toilet

    • In physiotherapy

  2. (b)

    Autonomous robots:

    • Assisting the elderly move around the house (i.e. lifting)

    • Escorting the elderly outside the home (i.e. going to a store)

    • Assisting in bathing and dressing up

    • Assisting in the toilet

    • In physiotherapy

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Parviainen, J., Turja, T., Van Aerschot, L. (2018). Robots and Human Touch in Care: Desirable and Non-desirable Robot Assistance. In: Ge, S., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11357. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_52

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05204-1_52

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05203-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05204-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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