Abstract
Care robots are robotic applications targeted for use in care and nursing environments, or to support independent living for the elderly and those with disabilities. Robots may provide relief to the challenge in many countries of tending to an increased elderly population’s needs for care services. This chapter provides an introductory review of care robots and discusses their acceptability within the field of elderly care. Our focus is on the end-users of robots, namely the elderly and care professionals, who are often neglected or misconceived within the field of technology development. We approach their perspective through three empirical studies: a citizen panel for older adults on their expectations and concerns for care robots, a case study of a social robot adopted within three elderly-care facilities, and a case study of a mobile telepresence robot piloted in two care facilities. In these studies, both elderly people and professionals showed positive perceptions towards care robots, at least from certain perspectives. They also presented requirements and framework conditions that should be taken into account when considering the use of robots in care. In particular, the study participants highlighted the priority of humans in care, although they accepted robots for carrying out secondary care tasks.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The Swedish government’s committee directive 2018:82 (2018). https://www.regeringen.se/4a38da/contentassets/038d2f97ae9d475b97d1fe318fca236a/valfardsteknik-i-aldreomsorgen-dir.-2018_82.pdf
- 2.
The Finnish government’s resolution on intelligent robotics and automation (2016). http://valtioneuvosto.fi/paatokset/paatos?decisionId=0900908f804c7484
- 3.
‘New Robot Strategy’. Japan’s robot strategy – Vision, strategy, action plan (2015). http://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/2015/pdf/0123_01b.pdf
- 4.
Strategic Research Agenda for Robotics in Europe 2014–2020 (2014). https://www.eu-robotics.net/cms/upload/topic_groups/SRA2020_SPARC.pdf
- 5.
ISO 8373: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:8373:ed-2:v1:en. Sometimes purely non-physical computer-based assistants – such as so-called virtual agents or artificial intelligence software solutions that perform routine assistive tasks on computers – are termed robots as well, although nonphysical robots are beyond the scope of this chapter.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
The public statement (in Finnish): http://www.bioetiikka.fi/?page_id=1054
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
As an example, a digital online reminiscence service has been developed for elderly individuals or groups; see Niemelä et al. (2017).
- 17.
References
Arras, K. O., & Cerqui, D. (2005). Do we want to share our lives and bodies with robots? A 2000-people survey (Technical Report No. 0605-001).
Bedaf, S., Gelderblom, G. J., & de Witte, L. (2015). Overview and categorization of robots supporting independent living of elderly people: What activities do they support and how far have they developed. Assistive Technology, 27(2), 88–100.
Broadbent, E., Stafford, R., & MacDonald, B. (2009). Acceptance of healthcare robots for the older population: Review and future directions. International Journal of Social Robotics, 1(4), 319–330.
Broadbent, E., Tamagawa, R., Patience, A., Knock, B., Kerse, N., Day, K., & MacDonald, B. A. (2012). Attitudes towards health-care robots in a retirement village. Australasian Journal on Ageing, 31(2), 115–120.
Broekens, J., Heerink, M., & Rosendal, H. (2009). Assistive social robots in elderly care: A review. Gerontechnology, 8(2), 94–103.
Burgess, M. M. (2014). From ‘trust us’ to participatory governance: Deliberative publics and science policy. Public Understanding of Science, 23, 48–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662512472160.
Compagna, D., & Kohlbacher, F. (2015). The limits of participatory technology development: The case of service robots in care facilities for older people. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 93, 19–31.
Coradeschi, S., Loutfi, A., Kristoffersson, A., von Rump, S., Cesta, A., Cortellessa, G., & Gonzalez, J. (2011). Towards a methodology for longitudinal evaluation of social robotic telepresence for elderly. In Proceedings of the HRI 2011 workshop on social robotic telepresence (pp. 1–7). Lausanne, Switzerland.
Dahl, T. S., & Kamel Boulos, M. N. (2014). Robots in health and social care: A complementary technology to home care and telehealthcare? Robotics, 3(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics3010001.
de Graaf, M., & Ben Allouch, S. (2013). Exploring influencing variables for the acceptance of social robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 61, 1476–1486. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2013.07.007.
Flandorfer, P. (2012). Population ageing and socially assistive robots for elderly persons: The importance of sociodemographic factors for user acceptance. International Journal of Population Research, 2012, 1. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/829835.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800405284363.
Frennert, S., Eftring, H., & Östlund, B. (2017). Case report: Implications of doing research on socially assistive robots in real homes. International Journal of Social Robotics, 9(3), 401–415.
Frennert, S., & Östlund, E. (2014). Review: Seven matters of concern of social robotics and older people. International Journal of Social Robotics, 6(2), 299–310.
Goeldner, M., Herstatt, C., & Tietze, F. (2015). The emergence of care robotics — A patent and publication analysis. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 92, 115–131.
Herstatt, C., Kohlbacher, F., & Bauer, P. (2011). Silver product design – Product development for older people. Working paper no. 65. Hamburg: Institute for Technology and Innovation Management, Hamburg University of Technology.
Jung, M., & Hinds, P. (2018). Robots in the wild: A time for more robust theories of human-robot interaction. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 7(1), 2–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3208975.
Karim, H. A., Lokman, A. M., & Redzuan, F. (2016). Older adults perspective and emotional respond [sic] on robot interaction. In Proceedings of the 4th international conference on user science and engineering (i-USEr 2016) (pp. 95–99). Piscataway: IEEE.
Kirby, R., Forlizzi, J., & Simmons, R. (2010). Affective social robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 28(3), 322–332.
Kristoffersson, A., Coradeschi, S., & Loutfi, A. (2013). A review of mobile robotic telepresence. Advances in Human-Computer Interaction, 2013, 1–17.
Kyrki, V., Coco, K., Hennala, L., Laitinen, A., Lehto, P., Melkas, H., Niemelä, M., … & Pekkarinen, S. (2016). Robotit ja hyvinvointipalvelujen tulevaisuus (ROSE-konsortio). Tilannekuvaraportti 2015. Strateginen tutkimus. Suomen Akatemia. http://www.aka.fi/globalassets/33stn/tilannekuvaraportit/tech-kyrki-robotiikkahyvinvointi-jaterveyspalveluissa_20160104.pdf.
McLafferty, I. (2004). Focus group interviews as a data collecting strategy. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 48(2), 187–194.
Melkas, H. (2013). Innovative assistive technology in Finnish public elderly-care services: A focus on productivity. Work, 46, 77–91. https://doi.org/10.3233/WOR-2012-1470.
Melkas, H., Hennala, L., Pekkarinen, S., & Kyrki, V. (2016). Human impact assessment of service robot implementation in Finnish elderly care. In 4th International Conference of Serviceology (ICServ2016), Tokyo, Japan, 6–8 September, 2016.
Melkas, H., Hennala, L., Pekkarinen, S., & Kyrki, V. (submitted). Robot implementation in elderly-care institutions: Impacts on care personnel and clients. Manuscript in review.
Michael, J., & Salice, A. (2017). The sense of commitment in human-robot interaction. International Journal of Social Robotics, 9, 755–763. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-016-0376-5.
Mukai, T., Hirano, S., Nakashima, H., Kato, Y., Sakaida, Y., Guo, S., & Hosoe, S. (2010). Development of a nursing-care assistant robot RIBA that can lift a human in its arms. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ 2010 international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS 2010), November, pp. 5996–6001. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2010.5651735
Neven, L. (2010). ‘But obviously not for me’: Robots, laboratories and the defiant identity of elder test users. Sociology of Health & Illness, 32(2), 335–347.
Niemelä, M., Kulju, M., Ylikauppila, M., & Määttä, H. (2017a). Do active seniors find digital reminiscence meaningful? A user study. In ICServ 2017 special session: Meaningful technologies for seniors. Tokyo, Japan.
Niemelä, M., van Aerschot, L., Tammela, A., & Aaltonen, I. (2017b). A telepresence robot in residential care: Family increasingly present, personnel worried about privacy. In A. Kheddar (Ed.), Lecture notes in computer science (including subseries Lecture notes in artificial intelligence and Lecture notes in bioinformatics) (Vol. 10652, pp. 85–94). Basel: Springer.
Niemelä, M., van Aerschot, L., Tammela, A., Aaltonen, I., & Lammi, H. (2019). Towards ethical guidelines of using telepresence robots in residential care. International Journal of Social Robotics (Online First). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00529-8.
Ott, I. (2012). Service robotics: An emergent technology field at the interface between industry and services. Poiesis & Praxis, 9(3–4), 219–229.
Parviainen, J., & Pirhonen, J. (2017). Vulnerable bodies in human-robot interaction: Embodiment as ethical issue in robot care for the elderly. Transformations, 29, special issue: ‘Social robots: Human-machine configurations’ (pp. 104–115).
Pekkarinen, S., & Hennala, L. (2016). Robotiikan haasteista. Finnish Journal of eHealth and eWelfare, 8(2–3), 137–138.
Pfadenhauer, M. (2013). On the sociality of social robots: A sociology-of-knowledge perspective. Science, Technology & Innovation Studies, 10(1), 135–153.
Rantanen, P., Parkkari, T., Leikola, S., Airaksinen, M., & Lyles, A. (2017). An in-home advanced robotic system to manage elderly home-care patients’ medications: A pilot safety and usability study. Clinical Therapeutics, 39(5), 1054. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinthera.2017.03.020.
Ray, C., Mondada, F., & Siegwart, R. (2008). What do people expect from robots? In 2008 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS) (pp. 3816–3821).
ROSE consortium. (2017). Robotics in care services: A Finnish roadmap. http://roseproject.aalto.fi/images/publications/Roadmap-final02062017.pdf.
Røtnes, R., & Dybvik Staalesen, P. (Eds.). (2009). New methods for user driven innovation in the health care sector. Oslo: Nordic Innovation Centre. http://nordicinnovation.org/Global/_Publications/Reports/2010/New%20methods%20for%20user%20driven%20innovation%20in%20the%20health%20care%20sector.pdf.
Rowe, G., & Frewer, L. J. (2005). A typology of public engagement mechanisms. Science, Technology & Human Values, 30(2), 251–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243904271724.
Šabanović, S. (2010). Robots in society, society in robots. International Journal of Social Robotics, 2, 439–450.
Savela, N., Turja, T., & Oksanen, A. (2018). Social acceptance of robots in different occupational fields: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Social Robotics, 10, 493–502. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-017-0452-5.
Saxén, S. (2017). Robotteja hoivaan? Raportti vanhojen ihmisten hoivarobotiikan hyväksyttävyyttä pohtineesta kansalaisraadista. Public report (in Finnish). http://www.bioetiikka.fi/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Rose-raportti.pdf.
Shibata, T., Wada, K., Ikeda, Y., & Sabanovic, S. (2009). Cross-cultural studies on subjective evaluation of a seal robot. Advanced Robotics, 23, 443–458.
Smarr, C. A., Prakash, A., Beer, J. M., Mitzner, T. L., Kemp, C. C., & Rogers, W. A. (2012). Older adults’ preferences for and acceptance of robot assistance for everyday living tasks. In Proceedings of the human factors and ergonomics society annual meeting (56, 1, 153–157). Los Angeles: Sage.
Sparrow, R., & Sparrow, L. (2006). In the hands of machines? The future of aged care. Minds and Machines, 16(2), 141–161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-006-9030-6.
Special Eurobarometer 427. (2015). Autonomous systems. http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/ebs/ebs_427_en.pdf
Taipale, S., Vincent, J., Sapio, B., Lugano, V., & Fortunati, L. (2015). Introduction: Situating the human in social robots. In J. Vincent, S. Taipale, B. Sapio, G. Lugano, & L. Fortunati (Eds.), Social robots from a human perspective. Cham/Heidelberg/New York/Dordrecht/London: Springer.
Tuisku, O., Pekkarinen, S., Hennala, L., & Melkas, H. (2018). ‘Robots do not replace a nurse with a beating heart’ – The publicity around a robotic innovation in elderly care. Information Technology and People, 32, 47. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-06-2018-0277.
Turja, T., Van Aerschot, L., Särkikoski, T., & Oksanen, A. (2018). Finnish healthcare professionals’ attitudes toward robots: Reflections on a population sample. Nursing Open, 5(3), 300–309. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.138.
Wada, K., & Shibata, T. (2007). Living with seal robots: Its sociopsychological and physiological influences on the elderly at a care house. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 23(5), 972–980.
Wada, K., Shibata, T., & Kawaguchi, Y. (2009). Long-term robot therapy in a health service facility for the aged: A case study for 5 years. In 2009 IEEE international conference on rehabilitation robotics (ICORR 2009) (pp. 930–933).
Wada, K., Shibata, T., Saito, T., & Tanie, K. (2004). Effects of robot-assisted activity for elderly people and nurses at a day service center. Proceedings of the IEEE, 92(11), 1780–1788.
Acknowledgements
This research is supported by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland (project name: Robots and the Future of Welfare Services [ROSE], decision numbers 292980 and 314180). The second author also acknowledges support from the LUT Research Platform on Smart Services for Digitalisation (DIGI-USER).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Niemelä, M., Melkas, H. (2019). Robots as Social and Physical Assistants in Elderly Care. In: Toivonen, M., Saari, E. (eds) Human-Centered Digitalization and Services. Translational Systems Sciences, vol 19. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7725-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7725-9_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-7724-2
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-7725-9
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)