Affective design of home service robot for elderly

• Main Author: Wong, Ji Bin.
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/50113
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

People are getting more interested in social robots, especially in the ageing population society today. In order to come up with a good design, the requirement and factors of acceptance are to be studied and analyzed first. The objective of this report is to propose a theoretical model of the factors that influence the acceptance of affective design of healthcare robot. Different acceptance models are studied and the proposed factors are picked out carefully to suit the context of healthcare robot. Questions are compiled based on these proposed factors and presented in a form of a questionnaire for participants to evaluate the ten proposed designs of healthcare robots. The proposed designs are presented in a form of story using the medium of text and pictures. The proposed model is then slightly modified based on the results from the questionnaire survey. Results show that Subjective Norm and Perceived Behavioral Control affect Behavioral Intention more than Cognitive and Affective Attitudes. This shows that what people view of the participants using the robot and their ability to operate the robot are more significant as compared to their attitudes towards the robots. This is slightly different from expected as it was expected that the main factors that affect acceptance would be the attitudes toward the robot designs. Hence this conclusion can be noted for future study. However this result is based on the evaluation of designs through the medium of text and pictures, thus results may vary if this model is being applied in other context. This report also studies the potential robot designs that would be chosen for the next stage of study. The designs ranged from abstract to human-like and results show that most people are open to new designs of robots and welcome the idea of having a healthcare robot in their homes to take care of their health when their family members are not around. Future study thus may include exploring the designs based on other factors such as personality.