Sammendrag
One question we ask ourselves as we age is, “who will help
us when we get older and need extra help?”
A natural answer to this question has, in the past, been
younger members of the family or nurses and other members
of the healthcare system. Future demographics of at least Europe
and North America, however, highlight a trend that there
will be a larger proportion of older, retired people than younger
who can take care of them. This could mean that when an older
person is in need of help, there is nobody to provide it.
One possible solution is to use information and communication
technology to help older people maintain their independence
and live at home longer. There are many ways this can be
achieved. This Ph.D. dissertation focuses on having a mobile robot
in the home that can monitor the vital signs of a person and
potentially contact experts in event of a problem.
A robot in the home opens many areas of research. This
dissertation, however, focuses on two areas. The first area we
examine is the privacy issues of a robot in the home. Many of
the technology solutions require collecting and processing data
about the home residents. How can we examine and discuss the
privacy issues related to a robot in the home? What trade-offs
must we take into consideration when a robot is in the home
environment?
The other area we examine is robot movement in the home,
how a robot should move, and how it affects people’s interaction
with a robot. Can other disciplines, such as film animation, help
make a robot move in ways that will lead to a better interaction?
Investigations into these aspects resulted in the four papers
that are presented in this dissertation. It also resulted in the following
additional contributions of: (1) a framework, with sample
dilemmas, for examining privacy issues in a home environment
with a robot. (2) a review of the use of animation techniques in
human-robot interaction user studies, (3) an examination of one
of the principles of animation and how it can be applied to a robot,
(4) a way of examining and categorizing movement between
a human and a robot in the home, and (5) an evaluation of how
applying this principle to a robot’s movement affects people’s
perception of the robot.
The contributions provide items that should be considered
when one is creating a robot for the home. Examining the potential
privacy boundaries that must be negotiated when a robot is
in the home can lead to privacy-preserving robots. In addition,
using animation techniques to move a robot may help in people
feeling safer around a robot, and this can make robots easier
to interact with in the home or anywhere we encounter them.
These contributions can lead to safe and trustworthy humanrobot
interaction with older people in the home.
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