Artificial Companions in Stroke Rehabilitation: Likeability, Familiarity and Expectations (original) (raw)
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Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are autonomous entities endowed with human-like communicative capabilities: they can talk, listen, grab one's attention, look at another one, show emotion, and so on (Cassell et al., 2000; Gustafson et al., 1999; Gratch and Marsella, 2004; Kopp and Wachsmuth, 2004; C. Pelachaud, 2005; Heylen, 2006; Gratch et al., 2007).
Tactile Affect and Human-Robot Intimacy in Japan
Consumer Culture Theory in Asia: History and Current Issues, edited by Russell Belk and Yuko Minowa. London and New York: Routledge. , 2022
Collaborations between entertainment industries and artificial intelligence researchers in Japan have since the mid-1990s produced a growing interest in modeling affect and emotion for use in mass-produced social robots. Robot producers and marketers reason that such robot companions can provide comfort, healing (iyashi), and intimacy in light of attenuating social bonds and increased socioeconomic stress characteristic of Japanese society since the collapse of the country’s bubble economy in the early 1990s. While many of these robots with so-called “artificial emotional intelligence” are equipped with rudimentary capacities to “read” predefined human emotion through such mechanisms as facial expression recognition, a new category of companion robots are more experimental. These robots do not interpret human emotion through affect-sensing software but rather invite human-robot interaction through affectively pleasing forms of haptic feedback. These new robots are called haptic creatures: robot companions designed to deliver a sense of comforting presence through a combination of animated movements and healing touch. Integrating historical analysis with ethnographic interviews with new users of these robots, and focusing in particular on the cat-like cushion robot Qoobo, this chapter argues that while companion robots are designed in part to understand specific human emotions, haptic creatures are created as experimental devices that can generate new and unexpected pleasures of affective care unique to human-robot relationships. It suggests that this distinction is critical for understanding and evaluating how corporations seek to use human-robot affect as a means to deliver care to consumers while also researching and building new markets for profit maximization.
2017
This dissertation addresses the emergence of emotional involvement in the interaction with social robots. More specifically, we investigate the dynamics of children bonding with robotic pets to design robot based programs to improve patients’ experience in pediatric hospitals. Pet-robots are robots that mimic real pets as dogs or cats, both in appearance and in behavior. We assume that gaining understanding of the emotional dimension of children/pet-robots interaction would contribute to evaluate the impact of pet-robots in children’s lives, and to inform both robots’ design and robot-based applications for health and wellbeing. First, this research presents a novel model of bonding with robotic pets inspired in the human-animal affiliation and particularly in child-dog relatedness, where bonding is envisaged as a process towards companionship that evolves through three stages –first impression, short-term interaction and lasting relationship- characterized by distinguishable patter...
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2016
This paper aims to explore the main factors of social vulnerability among older people and the improvements in social life after engaging with social robots. This paper also examines the influence of these factors on each other. Study 1 helped develop a conceptual model and research hypotheses by interviewing 17 specialists in both aged care and social robotics, using grounded theory methodology (GTM). To validate the conceptual model in general and its constructs and hypotheses in particular, Study 2 employed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) based on the survey distributed among 335 aged care specialists in Australia. The results of study 2 support the indirect effects of social robot enablement and robot mediation on reduction of social vulnerability (socioeconomic accessibility and community ties) through aged care service innovation. It also supports direct impact of robot mediation on augmentation of community ties among older people. Both qualitative and quantitative results measuring the research constructs and hypotheses provide valuable information to managers of aged care facilities and social robotics scholars to improve the quality of life for older people. The implementation of meaningful advances in merging people oriented robotic technology and social vulnerability in older people has demonstrated effective initiatives, including bridging the gap by synthesizing multidisciplinary interventions to ease social vulnerability.