Hello. My name is Felix Carros.
I work at the University of Siegen and today I'm going to present you
the work which was titled Care Workers Making Use of Robots.
Results of a Three-Month Study on Human Robot Interaction in a Care Home.
That work was done together with the TU Wien,
namely with Isabel Schwaninger, Adrian Preussner,
Dave Randall, Rainer Wieching, Geraldine Fitzpatrick and Volker Wulf.
The problem definition we had that motivated our work was:
since 2017, we worked with the robot Pepper
in a care home to figure or in several care homes.
And we saw that residents enjoyed to interact with the robot.
And also that the care workers were seeing it as something useful.
So we had quite a good acceptance among residents,
but the care home itself also.
But we also saw that the human controllers is needed or Wrangler.
So that is the person that is moderating the interaction
between the residents and the robot.
People, bringing the robot to the rooms where the interaction is happening,
maybe recharging the battery, choosing applications on the robot tablet,
a lot of different small task that made it impossible
that the robot is alone with the residents.
You always needed someone.
And that person usually was us, the researchers.
And that was not really sustainable.
I mean, we wanted to; we want with our work
to enhance the
care. We want to do to develop something useful for them.
And if you always need a technical person behind controlling the robot,
this is not going to help.
We actually need it for care workers or the social care workers
to be able to use the robot as a tool for their work.
And that was not accomplished yet.
We also saw that the social care workers had uncertainties using the robot.
They were afraid of breaking it.
They didn't know how to react when there was a software bug.
So they preferred that we are using it.
Sometimes we left the robot there for some times
and then after months I asked them "did you use it"
and they were like "No, not really".
So there was a gap.
But the residents like to use and in general care workers and management
were thinking it's useful, but we're not using it.
Further there was the COVID pandemic and the robot was seen as something useful
for avoiding to spreading the virus.
The methods we use were qualitative and quantitative:
workshops, observations of interaction, interviews of all involved,
so family members, care workers, management and the residents, of course.
Giving support to the care workers when using the robot.
So we have like a WhatsApp group, but also when we have been there
for the observation, we helped them.
And on the quantitative side we had a questionnairs and log-files
telling us how long the robot was used and what applications were used.
In the results we saw that the interaction was mainly between the robot
and the resident and the care worker in the background as a moderator.
In previous studies it was more like group interactions
with like five or six residents interact with one robot.
And of course, the moderating person again.
That was different and was more like the routine
of care workers that implied that kind of interaction,
they felt more comfortable to do like one on one interactions.
The usage time on average was 1 hour and 7 minutes.
We have to add to this a starting time at an end time time.
So bringing the robot to the room, bring it back,
starting the robot and turning it down, generally the usage
was perceived as a relief by the care workers
or the social care workers.
It was giving them more possibilities of activation.
So we had different activation applications on the robot
40 in total.
It was about cognitive activation, physical activation,
psychosocial activation, so people could play games
or listen to a story or do like sport activities of the robots.
And so the care workers didn't have to prepare
for this activities.
They could just use the robot doing this activities
and they only had to start from the tablet the application.
In some situations it was better for the residents
to interact with the robot than with the human.
Not always. But we saw, for example, one situation of crisis.
Well, there was one person who was with dementia
and she wanted to go home and the care workers
didn't really know what to do.
She was not happy, the resident.
And when they they brought in the robot and that somehow distracted her
from what she wanted to do.
And that was a relief for the coworkers.
They had something that was helping in the situation.
Another point of relief is that the social care worker
is not always the center of attention.
He is sitting next to it and of course moderating
but also with time to maybe check the phone
or to fill out some documents; help maybe if it was group interactions
had one specific resident with a specific need
for stopping the whole interaction.
Another result was, as you can see from the left side,
that the process integration was structured
so the care home chose themself it how they want to integrate this robot.
They chose a structured way of saying certain days
and certain times the robot will be used.
Additionally, the care workers could also use it whenever they wanted,
but there was a fixed time, like a monthly plan.
So it was very structured.
The preferred applications of the robot or of the residence
and of the care workers using it was psychosocial activation.
So that was for example, an application like guessing the age.
Resident liked that.
The robot was quite and quite often told 80 years old woman
that they look like 60 years old.
So they enjoyed that.
But also there was like soccer songs.
So we collected the favorit soccer teams of residents
and when the robots was playing the song of the soccer team dancing to it,
they enjoyed this.
So with this, I come to an end.
Thank you for your attention.
It was a pleasure to present to you, and I would like to take the opportunity
to thank all people involved, especially the care home,
but also the reviewers.
This work would not have been possible without them. Thank you. Bye.