https://www.mdu.se/

The aim of the study presented in this paper is to develop a quantitative evaluation tool of the sense of safety and security for robots in eldercare. By investigating the literature on measurement of safety and security in human-robot interaction, we propose new evaluation tools. These tools are semantic differential scale questionnaires. In experimental validation, we used the Pepper robot, programmed in the way to exhibit social behaviors, and constructed four experimental conditions varying the degree of the robot’s non-verbal behaviors from no gestures at all to full head and hand movements. The experimental results suggest that both questionnaires (for the sense of safety and the sense of security) have good internal consistency.

This research aims to develop an autonomous social robot for elderly individuals. The robot will learn from the interaction and change its behaviors in order to enhance the interaction and improve the user experience. For this purpose, we aim to use Deep Reinforcement Learning. The robot will observe the user’s verbal and nonverbal social cues by using its camera and microphone, the reward will be positive valence and engagement of the user.

This paper examines whether social cues, such as facial expressions, can be used to adapt and tailor a robot-assisted training in order to maximize performance and comfort. Specifically, this paper serves as a basis in determining whether key facial signals, including emotions and facial actions, are common among participants during a physical and cognitive training scenario. In the experiment, participants performed basic arm exercises with a social robot as a guide. We extracted facial features from video recordings of participants and applied a recursive feature elimination algorithm to select a subset of discriminating facial features. These features are correlated with the performance of the user and the level of difficulty of the exercises. The long-term aim of this work, building upon the work presented here, is to develop an algorithm that can eventually be used in robot-assisted training to allow a robot to tailor a training program based on the physical capabilities as well as the social cues of the users.

Smart home environments have a significant potential to provide for long-term monitoring of users with special needs in order to promote the possibility to age at home. Such environments are typically equipped with a number of heterogeneous sensors that monitor both health and environmental parameters. This paper presents a framework called E-care@home, consisting of an IoT infrastructure, which provides information with an unambiguous, shared meaning across IoT devices, end-users, relatives, health and care professionals and organizations. We focus on integrating measurements gathered from heterogeneous sources by using ontologies in order to enable semantic interpretation of events and context awareness. Activities are deduced using an incremental answer set solver for stream reasoning. The paper demonstrates the proposed framework using an instantiation of a smart environment that is able to perform context recognition based on the activities and the events occurring in the home.

This paper describes a methodology for performing longitudinal evaluations when a social robotic telepresence system is deployed in realistic environments. This work is the core of an Ambient Assisted Living Project called ExCITE, Enabling Social Interaction Through Telepresence. The ExCITE project is geared towards an elderly audience and has as aim to increase social interaction among elderly, their family and healthcare services by using robotic telepresence. The robotic system used in the project is called the Giraff robot and over a three year period, prototypes of this platform are deployed at a number of test-sites in different European countries where user feedback is collected and fedback into the refinement of the prototype. In this paper, we discuss the methodology of ExCITE in particular relation to other methodologies for longitudinal evaluation. The paper also provides a discussion of the possible pitfalls and risks in performing longitudinal studies of this nature particularly as they relate to social robotic telepresence technologies.

This paper presents an image-based cooperative driving system for telepresence robot, which allows safe operation in indoor environments and is meant to minimize the burden on novice users operating the robot. The paper focuses on one emerging telepresence robot, namely, mobile remote presence systems for social interaction. Such systems brings new opportunities for applications in healthcare and elderly care by allowing caregivers to communicate with patients and elderly from remote locations. However, using such systems can be a difficult task particularly for caregivers without proper training. The paper presents a first implementation of a vision-based cooperative driving enhancement to a telepresence robot. A preliminary evaluation in the laboratory environment is presented.

One goal of mobile robotic telepresence for social interaction is to design robotic units that are easy to operate for novice users and promote good interaction between people. This paper presents an exploratory study on the effect of camera orientation and field of view on the interaction between a remote and local user. Our findings suggest that limiting the width of the field of view can lead to better interaction quality as it encourages remote users to orient the robot towards local users.

Mobile robotic telepresence systems used for social interaction scenarios require that users steer robots in a remote environment. As a consequence, a heavy workload can be put on users if they are unfamiliar with using robotic telepresence units. One way to lessen this workload is to automate certain operations performed during a telepresence session in order to assist remote drivers in navigating the robot in new environments. Such operations include autonomous robot localization and navigation to certain points in the home and automatic docking of the robot to the charging station. In this paper we describe the implementation of such autonomous features along with user evaluation study. The evaluation scenario is focused on the first experience on using the system by novice users. Importantly, that the scenario taken in this study assumed that participants have as little as possible prior information about the system. Four different use-cases were identified from the user behaviour analysis.

Mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) has been introduced to allow communication from remote locations. Modern MRP systems offer rich capabilities for human-human interactions. However, simply driving a telepresence robot can become a burden especially for novice users, leaving no room for interaction at all. In this video we introduce a project which aims to incorporate advanced robotic algorithms into manned telepresence robots in a natural way to allow human-robot cooperation for safe driving. It also shows a very first implementation of cooperative driving based on extracting a safe drivable area in real time using the image stream received from the robot.

Auditory immersion plays a significant role in generating a good feeling of presence for users driving a telepresence robot. In this paper, one of the key characteristics of auditory immersion - sound source localization (SSL) - is studied from the perspective of those who operate telepresence robots from remote locations. A prototype which is capable of delivering soundscape to the user through Interaural Time Difference (ITD) and Interaural Level Difference (ILD) using the ORTF stereo recording technique was developed. The prototype was evaluated in an experiment and the results suggest that the developed method is sufficient for sound source localization tasks.

Mobile Robotic Telepresence (MRP) systems incorporate video conferencing equipment onto mobile robot devices which can be steered from remote locations. These systems, which are primarily used in the context of promoting social interaction between people, are becoming increasingly popular within certain application domains such as health care environments, independent living for the elderly and office environments. In this review, an overview of the various systems, application areas and challenges found in literature concerning mobile robotic telepresence is provided. The survey also proposes a set terminology for the field as there is currently a lack of standard terms for the different concepts related to MRP systems. Further, this review provides an outlook on the various research directions for developing and enhancing mobile robotic telepresence systems per se, as well as evaluating the interaction in laboratory and field settings. Finally, the survey outlines a number of design implications for the future of mobile robotic telepresence systems for social interaction.

In this paper we present data collected at a training session for health care personnel and alarm operators in steering a mobile social robotic telepresence robot for the first time. The purpose of the system is to be used as a communicative tool particularly when interacting with an elderly audience. The results are based on questionnaires which includes questions about experienced social and spatial presence from the Temple Presence Inventory as well as the Networked Minds Social Presence Inventory. Also investigated in this study is how intuitive the system was to use as well as how attentive the users were to what was going on in the environment. Over thirty healthcare personnel and alarm operators participated in the study and the overall results presented in the paper suggest that the two questionnaires are indeed suitable for use also in the social robotic telepresence domain fo rproviding indications on both social and spatial presence.

This article presents the results from a video-based evaluation study of a social robotic telepresence solution for elderly. The evaluated system is a mobile teleoperated robot called Giraff that allows caregivers to virtually enter a home and conduct a natural visit just as if they were physically there. The evaluation focuses on the perspectives from primary healthcare organizations and collects the feedback from different categories of health professionals. The evaluation included 150 participants and yielded unexpected results with respect to the acceptance of the Giraff system. In particular, greater exposure to technology did not necessarily increase acceptance and large variances occurred between the categories of health professionals. In addition to outlining the results, this study provides a number of indications with respect to increasing acceptance for technology for elderly.

In this paper, we focus on spatial formations when interacting via mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) systems. Previous research has found that those who used a MRP system to make a remote visit (pilot users) tended to use different spatial formations from what is typical in human-human interaction. In this paper, we present the results of a study where a pilot user interacted with ten elderly via a MRP system. Intentional deviations from known accepted spatial formations were made in order to study their effect on interaction quality from the local user perspective. Using a retrospective interviews technique, the elderly commented on the interaction and confirmed the importance of adhering to acceptable spatial configurations. The results show that there is a mismatch between pilot user behaviour and local user preference and that it is important to evaluate a MRP system from two perspectives, the pilot user’s and the local user’s.

The field of mobile robotic telepresence for social communication is in rapid expansion and it is of interest to understand what promotes good interaction. In this paper, we present the results of an experiment where novice users working in health care were given a guided tour while maneuvering a mobile robotic telepresence system for the first time. In a previous study, it was found that subjective presence questionnaires and observations of spatial configurations based on Kendon’s F-formations were useful to evaluate quality of interaction in mobile robotic telepresence. In an effort to find more automated methods to assess the quality of interaction, the study in this paper used the same measures, with the addition of objective sociometric measures. Experimental results show that the quantitative analysis of the sociometric data correlates with a number of parameters gathered via qualitative analysis, e.g. different dimensions of presence and observed problems in maneuvering the robot.

Robotic telepresence offers a means to connect to a remote location via traditional telepresence with the added value of moving and actuating in that location. Recently, there has been a growing focus on the use of robotic telepresence to enhance social interaction among elderly. However for such technology to be accepted it is likely that the experienced presence when using such a system will be important. In this paper, we present results obtained from a training session with a robotic telepresence system when used for the first time by healthcare personnel. The study was quantitative and based on two standard questionnaires used for presence namely, the Temple Presence Inventory (TPI) and the Networked Minds Social Presence Intentory. The study showed that overall the sense of social richness as perceived by the users was high. The users also had a realistic feeling regarding their spatial presence.

Many new technologies claiming to support independent living and prolonged possibilities of aging in place have been developed. To support independent living and increase the sense of safety and security both for the elderly themselves and for their relatives, the technologies have to be easily adaptable to match the divergent user’s personal expectations and needs. The study reported in this paper was conducted as seven case studies where a sensor network was deployed in homes of people with a self-perceived memory decline. We describe problems related to adaptive personalization of such technology in real settings and discuss what consequences these problems may have for the elderly people's and their relatives willingness to use the technology. Our results indicate that a lack of sufficient possibilities to adaptive personalization of the system makes it difficult to address individual user's expectations and needs. This, in turn, leads to a decreased trustworthiness of the technology and a risk of unwillingness to use the technology.

Stiftelsen Länsförsäkringsbolagens Forskningsfond finansierar forskningsprojekt som har för avsikt att stärka människors trygghet i sin nuvarande bostad. Detta dokument rapporterar forskning som skett inom ramen för utlysningen ”Tryggt boende”. Projektet som har titeln ”En metod för mätning av ett sensornätverks inverkan på trygghet” innefattar såväl kvalitativ som kvantitativ datainsamling från fem månaders testning av ett sensornätverk i hemmiljöer.

Vi vill tacka forskningsfondens styrelse för förtroendet men också rikta ett varmt tack till vår referensgrupp i vilken Marie Villman (Örebro kommun), Susanne Lidmo (Länsförsäkringar) samt Ingvor Pettersson (Institutionen för Hälsovetenskap och medicin, Örebro universitet). Vi vill tacka Abilia som bistått vid installationer av sensornätverket, Örebro kommuns Minnesmottagning som hjälpt oss hitta testpersoner samt Örebroregionen Science Park som hjälpt oss att sprida information om detta projekt. Slutligen vill vi också tacka våra sju testpersoner med anhöriga som möjliggjort detta projekt.

Slutrapporten är skriven för att kunna läsas av alla intresserade av projektet. För mer ingående information kring forskningsresultaten hänvisas till de forskningspublikationer som är, eller kommer att bli, resultat av studien.

Örebro 2015-03-01

Annica Kristoffersson, tekn dr, Örebro universitet

Ella Kolkowska, fil dr, Örebro universitet

Amy Loutfi, tekn dr, docent, lektor, projektledare (Örebro universitet (amy.loutfi@oru.se)

The goal of our studies is to iteratively refine prototypes of the robot by involving end users in development cycles of the prototype throughout the project. The evaluations will be conducted with the aim of maximizing usability across geographic, demographic and cultural boundaries, as well as diverse home environments and user preferences and attitudes. The project ExCITE focuses on end users’ perspectives when using a robotic telepresence platform, the Giraff. The Giraff system consists of a tiltable screen and web camera mounted on a moveable robotic base that can be teleoperated. Our application area is elder care. We motivate the use of telepresence in elder care as a way to ensure safety, facilitate independent living and enhance social interaction.

This paper presents tools for measuring the qualityof interaction in social mobile robotic telepresence. Themethodology is in part based on Adam Kendon’s theory of F-formations.The theory is based on observations of how bodiesnaturally orient themselves during interaction between peoplein real life settings. In addition, two presence questionnaires(Temple Presence Inventory and Networked Minds Social PresenceInventory), designed to measure the users’ perceptionsof others and the environment when experienced through acommunication medium were used. The perceived presence andease of use are correlated to the spatial formations between therobot and an actor. Use of the tools is validated experimentallyon a dataset consisting of interactions between an elder (actor)and 21 different users being trained in piloting a mobile robotictelepresence unit. The evaluation has shown that these tools aresuitable for evaluating mobile robotic telepresence and also thatcorrelations between the tools used exist. Further, also from alocal user perspective, the spatial formations have affected theperceived comfort in an interaction.

This article presents a method for measuring the quality of interaction in social mobile robotic telepresence. The methodology is in part based on Adam Kendon's theory of F-formations. The theory is based on observations of how bodies naturally orient themselves during interaction between people in real life settings. In addition, two presence questionnaires (Temple Presence Inventory and Networked Minds Social Presence Inventory), designed to measure the users' perceptions of others and the environment when experienced through a communication medium are used. The perceived presence and ease of use are correlated to the spatial formations between the robot and an actor. The proposed methodology is validated experimentally on a dataset consisting of interactions between an elder (actor) and 21 different users being trained in piloting a mobile robotic telepresence unit. The evaluation has shown that these tools are suitable for evaluating mobile robotic telepresence and also that correlations between the tools used exist. Further, these results give iportant quidlines on how to improve the interface in order to increase the quality of interaction.

I och med den fjärde industriella revolutionen – Industri 4.0 – kommer en nygeneration av teknik att finnas tillgänglig. Det förutspås att robotik och virtualreality kommer att transformera inte bara arbetsplatser utan även utvecklaandra domäner, såsom smarta städer och möjligheten till livsstils- och hälsomonitoreringhemma.Antalet tillgängliga konsument- och medicintekniska produkter ökar irask takt. Hälso- och sjukvårdssystemet ställs inför utmaningar, såsom behovetav att utveckla verktyg för att hantera ny teknologi men också att förändraarbetsprocesser och anpassa organisationen för att kunna hantera teknologin.

Det här kapitlet ger en översikt över kommande teknologier, förslag på hurteknologi kan användas i hemmiljöer, en översikt över hur sådan teknik utvärderatssamt inte minst en reflektion kring hur dessa teknologier kan harmoniseramed nuvarande organisatoriska processer.

This article reports on the EU project ExCITE with specific focus on the technical development of the telepresence platform over a period of 42 months. The aim of the project was to assess the robustness and validity of the mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) system Giraff as a means to support elderly people and to foster their social interaction and participation. Embracing the idea of user-centered product refinement, the robot was tested over long periods of time in real homes. As such, the system development was driven by a strong involvement of elderly people and their caregivers but also by technical challenges associated with deploying the robot in real-world contexts. The results of the 42-months’ long evaluation is a system suitable for use in homes rather than a generic system suitable, for example, in office environments.