hi my name is laura stegner i am a phd student at the university of wisconsin-madison and today
i will be presenting work that i did with bilge mutlu titled designing for caregiving integrating
robotic assistance in senior living communities the population is aging globally and the number
of caregivers required to care for this aging population is not keeping up with the demand
there has been a long time vision for care robots to fill this gap by assisting with
care for the elderly or disabled most of this work so far has focused on providing effective
assistance to and creating a positive experience for the care recipients themselves however the
care interaction with the robot is not really dyadic we envision human caretakers will always
be involved given the connections they build with care recipients and the social nature of care work
robotic technology should support the existing practices and workflows of these caregivers
for the rest of the talk i'll start by giving some background on senior living communities
next i'll explain our methods involving a field study then i'll touch upon our results which
consist of the six themes from our analysis finally i'll discuss design implications that
we take away from our results we conducted our study at a senior living community these
facilities provide accommodation to aging individuals with a wide range of care needs
on one hand we have independent living where residents live in apartments complete with
their own kitchen they have a caregiver on site to assist with smaller tasks like medication
management showering or getting dressed but these residents live almost completely independently
on the other side of the spectrum is assisted living which is for individuals who require
significantly more care with activities such as using the toilet transferring from a chair or
bed meal preparation picking up items that have fallen to the floor and so on the residents in
assisted living have their own private rooms but gather in community dining rooms for meal service
the facility we partnered with had a mix of independent and assisted living allowing us
to incorporate both into our work to investigate how robots can integrate into caregiver workflows
we conducted a study at a senior living community using a mix of ethnographic and co-design methods
first we conducted fly on the wall observations to learn the natural context and workflow structure
during the observations the researcher followed a caregiver around during their
shift and took field notes this experience was intended to reveal tacit knowledge that
the caregivers would not necessarily think to mention during an interview after all
of the observations were completed we conducted follow-up interviews with a co-design component
we first asked the caregivers about their views of their work and its challenges
then we wanted to gather ideas about how a robot might assist with their work caregivers were
given supplies to sketch what they would want a robot to look like we used the sketch as a
starting point to discuss what features the robot should have and what tasks it should be able to do
finally we presented the caregivers with images of existing robots and discussed what these
robots could do to help them these images served as visual prompts to see if different robots would
spark different ideas about how robots could help we worked with a total of seven caregivers at one
facility split between assisted and independent living to conduct eight observation sessions and
five interviews all caregivers were female which is typical of the caregiving industry
we combined the field notes and interview transcripts then analyze them with a thematic
analysis that revealed six themes which we split into two high-level categories
the first category is factors that shape caregiving which includes caregiver workflows
resident needs and preferences and communication the second category is the desired role of the
robot which includes providing physical support providing social support and expectations of
interaction modality we discuss each theme in more detail next first we consider caregiver
workflows caregivers in independent and assisted living both have scheduled care tasks to do
with independent living the caregiver often has downtime in between helping residents with
those scheduled tasks in assisted living on the other hand the caregiver needs to
balance their schedule tasks with responding to unscheduled tasks residents need help with
here we can see the caregiver starts to take care of the scheduled tasks first helping the
pink resident then while helping the orange resident that resident has an unscheduled need
that the caregiver also takes care of then the blue resident calls the caregiver for
assistance so the caregiver must leave the orange resident to help the blue resident and so on
despite the differences in task predictability all caregivers emphasize the challenge of time
management and the importance of responding quickly to call lights
due to the range and abilities of residents it is important for the caregivers to personalize their
care for each one sometimes this personalization is based on physical ability such as needing to
speak extremely loudly to residents who are hard of hearing while other times it is based on their
personal preference such as how they want their pillows arranged before bed while medical needs
are written down much of this personalization is actually information that the caregivers learn
over time from interacting with residents the caregivers deal with two kinds of communication
with residents and with other caregivers with residents the caregiver takes additional steps
to include the resident in the caregiving process the caregiver asks permission to do tasks and
informs the resident of what is being done to help protect that resident's autonomy and to
give them a voice in their own care with other caregivers the primary means of communication
is through an electronic charting system that tracks what care each resident receives
in independent living only one caregiver was on duty at a time so this was the only communication
however with assisted living many caregivers worked at once so they would also stop to chat
briefly with each other in passing our second category is the desired role of the robot while
we observe differences in the factors that shape caregiving between assisted and independent living
we did not find a difference in their expectations for the robot first the caregivers expressed
the desire for highly capable robots to perform complex physical tasks here we see sketches from
the co-design part of the interview the caregivers all drew a humanoid robot with a mobile base and
expressed it should have two arms so that it can do anything the caregivers themselves could do
from lifting residents to helping them bathe they also expressed the robot should have advanced
sensing capabilities such as smell taste and touch to better monitor and care for residents
the caregivers viewed their job as more than just the physical assistance they
provide to residents in daily activities emphasizing their role in providing mental
and emotional support that residents need they drew robots with features such as
a heart and a smiling face indicating the robot should not be too cold or industrious
however considering the importance of the social support the caregivers questioned
whether a robot should provide it instead they were more interested in a physical assistant
to offload tasks to allowing them to spend more time addressing the social needs of the residents
the caregivers wanted to control the robot directly either verbally telling it what to do
or planning tasks for the robot in advance with the control interface they also felt the robot
should be able to handle requests directly from the resident but not without some supervision in
some situations such as if the robot is delivering food to a resident requiring a special diet
then they felt the robot's work should be checked to ensure it is not going to harm the resident
based on our results we provide design implications that consider how care robots
can fit into the existing workflows of caregivers caregivers express the need for highly capable
care robots that need to operate in variable complex environments current robots have a
long way to go but advancing capabilities make the vision of care robots much more within reach
first to support unpredictable caregiver workflows and provide fiscal support to residents care
robots must have multiple capabilities such as the ability to lift residents manipulating
items and proactive monitoring from our findings on interaction expectations we
recommend that care robots must also fit into a control hierarchy where the robot relies on
the caregiver to address conflicts between the caregiver and resident desires the robot
should have a supporting role instead of making decisions that could potentially harm residents
second we found that caregivers learn and consider resident needs and preferences when they provide
care beyond what is written in their medical records to allow care robots to effectively
adapt to resident capabilities caregivers need to be able to express their domain knowledge
of resident needs and preferences to the robot and robots should also adapt over time to input
from caregivers and interactions with the residents the caregiver should therefore be
able to assign tasks to the robot through an end-user programming interface and the robot
should take feedback from the residents and caregivers to automatically adapt over time
the addition of care robots creates a triadic interaction involving the caregiver
the resident and the robot both the resident and caregiver are stakeholders who need to be aware of
their robot's status and intentions so to provide feedback to all these stakeholders the robots need
to provide feedback to both the resident and the caregiver they're about to communicate with the
resident what action it will perform and it should maintain a human readable log for the caregivers
to easily check the robot status overall we used ethnographic and co-design methods to explore
design opportunities to support caregiving in senior living communities with robotic assistance
we found that caregivers work in highly variable complex environments so the integration of care
robots into the existing workflows and practices is non-trivial based on our results we present
design implications suggesting how care robots can integrate into senior living communities
overall we call for more focus on the triadic interactions involving residents care robots
and caregivers our work contributes to the growing body of work surrounding care robots
specifically by considering design opportunities from caregiver perspectives
thank you for watching and i look forward to answering your questions