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The isolation measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic brought light to discussions related to the importance of meaningful social relationships as a basic need to human well-being. But even before the pandemic outbreak in the years 2020 and 2021, organizations and scholars were already drawing attention to the growing numbers related to lonely people in the world (World Economic Forum, 2019). Loneliness is an emotional distress caused by the lack of meaningful social connections, which affects people worldwide across all age groups, mainly young adults (Rook, 1984). The use of digital technologies has gained prominence as a means of alleviating the distress. As an example, studies have shown the benefits of using digital games both to stimulate social interactions (Steinfield, Ellison & Lampe, 2008) and to enhance the effects of digital interventions for mental health treatments, through gamification (Fleming et al., 2017). It is with these aspects in mind that the gamified app Noneliness was designed with the intention of reducing loneliness rates among young students at a German university. In addition to sharing the related works that supported the application development, this chapter also presents the aspects considered for the resource's design, its main functionalities, and the preliminary results related to the reduction of loneliness in the target audience.
The findings presented in this article were obtained through a preliminary exploratory study conducted at the Offenburg University as part of the Fighting Loneliness project promoted by the institution’s Affective & Cognitive Institute (ACI) from October 2019 to February 2020. The initiative’s main objective was to answer the research question “How should an app be designed to reduce loneliness and social isolation among university students?” with the collaboration of the institution’s students.
In the last years, social robots have become a trending topic. Indeed, robots which communicate with us and mimic human behavior patterns are fascinating. However, while there is a massive body of research on their design and acceptance in different fields of application, their market potential has been rarely investigated. As their future integration in society may have a vast disruptive potential, this work aims at shedding light on the market potential, focusing on the assistive health domain. A study with 197 persons from Italy (age: M = 67.87; SD = 8.87) and Germany (age: M = 62.15; SD = 6.14) investigates cultural acceptance, desired functionalities, and purchase preferences. The participants filled in a questionnaire after watching a video illustrating some examples of social robots. Surprisingly, the individual perception of health status, social status as well as nationality did hardly influence the attitude towards social robots, although the German group was somewhat more reluctant to the idea of using them. Instead, there were significant correlations with most dimensions of the Almere model (like perceived enjoyment, sociability, usefulness and trustworthiness). Also, technology acceptance resulted strongly correlated with the individual readiness to invest money. However, as most persons consider social robots as “Assistive Technological Devices” (ATDs), they expected that their provision should mirror the usual practices followed in the two Countries for such devices. Thus, to facilitate social robots’ future visibility and adoption by both individuals and health care organisations, policy makers would need to start integrating them into official ATDs databases.
Sollen soziale Roboter Teil unserer Gesellschaft werden?
Eingebettet in eine spannende Kriminalgeschichte vermittelt der Wissenschaftscomic von Oliver Korn und Jonas Grund den aktuellen Stand und Ausblick der Wissenschaft auf Social Robots.
Die Geschichte spielt in der nahen Zukunft: In einem internationalen Projekt erforschen Wissenschaftler die Anforderungen an soziale Roboter für den Gesundheitsbereich. Kurz bevor der Prototyp eines Pflegeroboters in einer Feldstudie zum Einsatz kommt, verschwindet er spurlos. In ihrem ersten großen Fall begibt sich die junge Kommissarin Kira auf eine Reise in die Welt der Wissenschaft. Dabei lernt sie viel über soziale Roboter, KI und die Welt internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kooperationen. Immer wieder kommen kritische Stimmen zu Wort: Anti-Roboter-Aktivisten protestieren gegen Automatisierung und ein Schwinden von Menschlichkeit und Empathie. Selbst in der Familie der Kommissarin wird die mögliche Pflege älterer Menschen durch Roboter kontrovers diskutiert.
Übergreifendes Ziel ist es, über alle Altersstufen hinweg Wissen aufzubauen, damit die Vor- und Nachteile dieser neuen Technologien kontrovers, aber kenntnisreich diskutiert werden können. „Soziale Roboter – ein Science Comic“ ist ein Beitrag zu einer informierten Diskussion in den Feldern Robotik, künstliche Intelligenz, Ethik und Politik und damit auch als Lehr- und Lernmittel geeignet.
Der Comic wurde für Jugendliche und Erwachsene konzipiert und gestaltet. Insbesondere aber für jene, die bisher kaum in Berührung mit sozialen Robotern und künstlicher Intelligenz gekommen sind. Eine weitere Zielgruppe sind im Gesundheitswesen tätige Personen, denn die Betreuung und Pflege älterer Menschen gelten als einer der zukünftig wichtigsten Anwendungsbereiche für soziale Roboter.
DINA4 Hochformat, Hardcover Fadenheftung, erschienen in Deutsch und Englisch. Herausgegeben im Selbstverlag Affective & Cognitive Institute (ACI), Hochschule Offenburg
Should social robots become part of our society?
Embedded in an exciting crime story, the science comic by Oliver Korn and Jonas Grund conveys the current state and outlook of science on social robots.
The story takes place in the near future: In an international project, scientists are researching the requirements for social robots for the health sector. Shortly before the prototype of a nursing robot is used in a field study, it disappears without a trace. In her first major case, the young inspector Kira embarks on a journey into the world of science. In the process, she learns a lot about social robots, AI and the world of international scientific cooperation. Again and again, critical voices are heard: anti-robot activists protest against automation and a dwindling of humanity and empathy. Even in the Commissioner's family, the possible care of elderly people by robots is controversially discussed.
The overarching goal is to build knowledge across all age groups so that the advantages and disadvantages of these new technologies can be discussed controversially but knowledgeably. "Social Robots - a Science Comic" is a contribution to an informed discussion in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, ethics and politics and is thus also suitable as a teaching and learning tool.
The comic was conceived and designed for young people and adults. In particular, however, for those who have hardly come into contact with social robots and artificial intelligence so far. Another target group are people working in the health care sector, because the care and nursing of elderly people are considered to be one of the most important areas of application for social robots in the future.
DINA4 portrait format, hardcover thread stitching, published in German and English. Self-published by the Affective & Cognitive Institute (ACI), Offenburg University.
New employees are supposed to quickly understand their tasks, internal processes and familiarize with colleagues. This process is called “onboarding” and is still mainly realized by organizational methods from human resource management, such as introductory events or special employee sessions. Software tools and especially mobile applications are an innovative means to support provide onboarding processes in a modern, even remote, way. In this paper we analyze how the use of gamification can enhance onboarding processes. Firstly, we describe a mobile onboarding application specifically developed for the young, technically literate generations Y and Z, who are just about to start their career. Secondly, we report on a study with 98 students and young employees. We found that participants enjoyed the gamified application. They especially appreciated the feature “Team Bingo” which facilitates social integration and teambuilding. Based on the OCEAN personality model (“Big Five”), the personality traits agreeableness and openness revealed significant correlations with a preference for the gamified onboarding application.
For e-commerce retailers it is crucial to present their products both informatively and attractively. Virtual reality (VR) systems represent a new marketing tool that supports customers in their decision-making process and offers an extraordinary product experience. Despite these advantages, the use of this technology for e-commerce retailers is also associated with risks, namely cybersickness. The aim of the study is to investigate the occurrence of cybersickness in the context of the customer’s perceived enjoyment and the perceived challenge of a VR product presentation. Based on a conceptual research framework, a laboratory study with 533 participants was conducted to determine the influence of these factors on the occurrence of cybersickness. The results demonstrate that the perceived challenge has a substantially stronger impact on the occurrence of cybersickness, which can only be partially reduced by perceived enjoyment. When realizing VR applications in general and VR product presentations in particular, e-commerce retailers should therefore first minimize possible challenges instead of focusing primarily on entertainment aspects of such applications.
This article presents a study of cultural differences affecting the acceptance and design preferences of social robots. Based on a survey with 794 participants from Germany and the three Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, we discuss how culture influences the preferences for certain attributes. We look at social roles, abilities and appearance, emotional awareness and interactivity of social robots, as well as the attitude toward automation. Preferences were found to differ not only across cultures, but also within countries with similar cultural backgrounds. Our findings also show a nuanced picture of the impact of previously identified culturally variable factors, such as attitudes toward traditions and innovations. While the participants’ perspectives toward traditions and innovations varied, these factors did not fully account for the cultural variations in their perceptions of social robots. In conclusion, we believe that more real-life practices emerging from the situated use of robots should be investigated. Besides focusing on the impact of broader cultural values such as those associated with religion and traditions, future studies should examine how users interact, or avoid interaction, with robots within specific contexts of use.
Social robots are robots interacting with humans not only in collaborative settings, but also in personal settings like domestic services and healthcare. Some social robots simulate feelings (companions) while others just help lifting (assistants). However, they often incite both fascination and fear: what abilities should social robots have and what should remain exclusive to humans? We provide a historical background on the development of robots and related machines (1), discuss examples of social robots (2) and present an expert study on their desired future abilities and applications (3) conducted within the Forum of the European Active and Assisted Living Programme (AAL). The findings indicate that most technologies required for the social robots' emotion sensing are considered ready. For care robots, the experts approve health-related tasks like drawing blood while they prefer humans to do nursing tasks like washing. On a larger societal scale, the acceptance of social robots increases highly significantly with familiarity, making health robots and even military drones more acceptable than sex robots or child companion robots for childless couples. Accordingly, the acceptance of social robots seems to decrease with the level of face-to-face emotions involved.
Deafblindness is a condition that limits communication capabilities primarily to the haptic channel. In the EU-funded project SUITCEYES we design a system which allows haptic and thermal communication via soft interfaces and textiles. Based on user needs and informed by disability studies, we combine elements from smart textiles, sensors, semantic technologies, image processing, face and object recognition, machine learning, affective computing, and gamification. In this work, we present the underlying concepts and the overall design vision of the resulting assistive smart wearable.