Multifaceted analysis of older adults’ and caretakers’ attitudes toward social robots

Abstract

The global aging population is increasing drastically, bringing crucial concerns regarding the lives of older adults. Though older people generally prefer staying at their own homes while aging, it’s necessary to find solutions that will enhance their well-being and life quality since they experience many psychological and physical problems. This thesis focused on social robots’ role in enriching older adults’ environments, thus improving their healthspan by enhancing their psychological and physiological health. Therefore, aim of this thesis was to understand older adults’ and caretakers’ attitudes toward social robots. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with older adults (N=18) and caretakers (N=12). In the interviews, photos and videos of the three social robots with different abilities, appearances, and human-likeness levels were shown. These robots are the pet- like robot Aibo, the toy-like robot Paro, and the humanoid robot Pepper. Then, participants were asked to answer open-ended questions to explore their feelings about the robots, their preferences regarding meeting and interacting with them, and whether they would want to have these robots in their homes. Results were analyzed using sentiment analysis, which is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) method, and a qualitative analysis method, thematic analysis (TA). Sentiment analysis results demonstrate a differentiation in caretakers’ attitudes toward social robots. They perceived Paro negatively but responded positively to Aibo and Pepper. On the other hand, older adults seem to have similar attitudes toward the three robots. Three experts working in the field of human-robot interaction conducted the TA separately. Combining their analysis, a new model was created, and when all experts confirmed this model, four overarching themes emerged: I) Perceived and expected roles of the robot, II) Physical characteristics and de- sign features of the robot, III) Factors influencing acceptance of the robot, and IV) Disadvantages of the robot. Themes and sub-themes under the overarching themes differed partly between older adults and caretakers and across Aibo, Paro, and Pepper. The findings of this thesis contribute to the literature by comparing the attitudes toward three different social robots in Turkish culture with the adoption of a multifaceted design approach.