Abstract
Assistive robots have the potential to support older people and people with disabilities in various tasks so that they can live more independently. One of the research challenges is the appearance of assistive robots so that they are accepted by prospective users and encourage interaction. This scoping review aims to identify studies that report preferences in order to derive indicators for the embodiment of a robot with assistance functions. A systematic literature research was conducted in the three electronic databases IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library and PubMed Central (PMC). Included papers date back not further than 2015 and report empirical studies about the preferred appearance of service robots. The search resulted in 1,760 papers. 29 were included, of which 20 papers reported quantitative studies, three described a qualitative and six a mixed-methods design. Out of these papers, seven categories of robot appearances and design components could be extracted. Most papers focused on humanoid or humanlike robots and components like facial features or gender aspects. Others relied on design that reflects the robot’s function or simulated emotions through light applications. Only eight studies focused on older adults, and no study on people with disabilities. The appearance of a humanoid robot is often described as favorable, but the definition of ‘humanoid’ varies widely within all analyzed studies and an explizit allocation of features is not possible. For their practical work, robot designers can extract various aspects from the papers; however, for generalization more research is necessary.
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The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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The authors would like to thank the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences Library for its their advice and support.
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Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The research leading to these results received funding from the Commerzbank Foundation, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Marina Ringwald, Paulina Theben, Ken Gerlinger and Annika Hedrich. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Marina Ringwald and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Ringwald, M., Theben, P., Gerlinger, K. et al. How Should Your Assistive Robot Look Like? A Scoping Review on Embodiment for Assistive Robots. J Intell Robot Syst 107, 12 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01781-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01781-3