Open Access

An aging society paired with a skilled labor shortage, particularly in European countries, requires a rethinking of deprecated structures. Intelligent assistive technologies, specifically socially assistive robots, addressing the gap between caretakers and elderly people in need of care have moved into the focus of debate due to their potentials to reduce costs, improve independence, and eventually raise quality of life. In this work, we outline the potentials of zoomorphic robot companions combining intelligent conversational abilities and emotion recognition. We then describe the prototyping of an emotion-sensing zoomorphic interactive robot companion including the development and implementation of a multimodal emotion recognition framework. This framework uses speech emotion recognition, sentiment analysis, and affective voice interaction based on a large language model. The prototyping has been accompanied by two studies on elderly peoples' design preferences regarding the proposed feature set as well as different embodiments to find the appropriate casing for the robot companion. This work provides valuable insights into the prototyping and can thus support future research endeavors in this area.

Training and further education are crucial for efficiency and safety in large companies. However, learning special vocabulary about dangerous goods, occupational safety, or internal codes can be tedious due to the need for repetition. Combining learning with the intrinsic motivation and fun of playing digital games, a concept known as serious games, is gaining traction with recent advancements in the gaming industry. Particularly mobile games have become popular due to their accessibility. Despite evidence of the benefits of serious games, the potentials of low-threshold mobile games in vocational training are still underexplored. In this work, we present the results of a study (n = 79) investigating the potentials of a serious low-threshold mobile game called “Sky Dash” to enhance the experience of a repetitive learning task in the context of a large company in ground logistics. We used a between-subjects design with employees working in the baggage handling at an international airport. The findings underline the users’ appreciation of interactive gamified learning in comparison to non-gamified passive learning. Although participants learning with the non-gamified method performed significantly better than those using the gamified method, it is another major finding that knowledge gain among participants learning with the game was still significant between pre-, post-, and memory tests, and they reported significantly more fun.

Socially assistive robots (SARs) are becoming more prevalent in everyday life, emphasizing the need to make them socially acceptable and aligned with users' expectations. Robots' appearance impacts users' behaviors and attitudes towards them. Therefore, product designers choose visual qualities to give the robot a character and to imply its functionality and personality. In this work, we sought to investigate the effect of cultural differences on Israeli and German designers' perceptions of SARs' roles and appearance in four different contexts: a service robot for an assisted living/retirement residence facility, a medical assistant robot for a hospital environment, a COVID-19 officer robot, and a personal assistant robot for domestic use. The key insight is that although Israeli and German designers share similar perceptions of visual qualities for most of the robotics roles, we found differences in the perception of the COVID-19 officer robot's role and, by that, its most suitable visual design. This work indicates that context and culture play a role in users' perceptions and expectations; therefore, they should be taken into account when designing new SARs for diverse contexts.

Digital, virtual environments and the metaverse are rapidly taking shape and will generate disruptive changes in the areas of ethics, privacy, safety, and how the relationships between human beings will be developed. To uncover some of some of the implications that will impact those areas, this study investigates the perceptions of 101 younger people from the generations Y and Z. We present a first exploratory analysis of the findings, focusing on knowledge and self-perception. Results show that these young generations are seriously doubting their knowledge on the metaverse and virtual worlds – regarding both the definition and the usage. It is interesting to see only a medium confidence level, considering that the participants are young and from an academic environment, which should increase their interest in and the affinity towards virtual worlds. Males from both generations perceive themselves as significantly more knowledgeable than females. Regarding a fitting definition, almost 40% agreed on the metaverse as a “universal and immersive virtual world that is made accessible using virtual reality and augmented reality technologies”. Regarding the topic in general, several participants (almost 40%) considered themselves sceptics or “just” users (38%). Interestingly, generation Y participants were more likely than the younger generation Z participants to identify themselves as early adopters or innovators. In result, the considerable amount of “mixed feelings” regarding digital, virtual environments and the metaverse shows that in-depth studies on the perception of the metaverse as well as its ethical and integrity implications are required to create more accessible, inclusive, safe, and inclusive digital, virtual environments.

Im Projekt incluMOVE soll ein augmentierter Lern- und Arbeitsplatz entwickelt werden, der Menschen mit und ohne Behinderung beim Erlernen und Durchführen einer berufsbildrelevanten Tätigkeit unterstützt und assistiert.