Collaborative Research: HCC: Medium: Designing Social Companion Robots for Long-term Interaction

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Social robots have the potential to improve the everyday lives of many people. They may serve as tutors for children. They could provide help for older adults with daily living tasks. Social robots may also provide companionship for those who feel lonely and isolated. Despite the promise of social robots, they are not currently capable of sustaining positive long-term interactions in the home or in research settings. There is a need for research to better understand and design social robots for long-term use lasting months or years. This project seeks to overcome barriers and improve long-term human-robot interactions. The research team will design robots that help to build and maintain relationships with people. The project will focus on the development of a social robot reading companion for children aged 8 to 10. The robot will build connections with children and their families. It will take part in a variety of family activities. These activities may include robot-guided reading, robot caretaking, and robot-facilitated family recreation. A diverse set of families will co-design a social robot for long-term home use. This activity will give a voice to families and communities in the robot design process. This research will advance the knowledge of social robot design for long-term interactions. These advancements will enable social robots to provide valuable help to people in their daily lives.Researchers and companies who develop social robots face many challenges. A primary challenge is sustaining long-term interactions with social robots. These robots have great potential to improve learning, service interactions, and help people. Users become disappointed after the novelty wears off with the capabilities of robots and often stop using the robots. The research team will co-design, develop, and test an autonomous social robot for home use. The focus of the social robot is on building and maintaining inter-personal relationships. The primary goal is on long-term interactions that move beyond initial excitement around the use of novel technology. As a first step, the research team will perform a series of studies. The studies will help to understand the family ecosystem and disruptions to family routines. These co-design studies will provide a "robot-family integration plan." This plan will provide the needed structure for robot integration into family routines. By understanding these routines, the research team will design and develop family-robot activities. These activities may include robot-guided reading, robot caretaking, and robot-facilitated family recreation. The social robot design will leverage social affordances that allow for a successful robot integration into existing family routines. After individual activity testing, integration will occur into a single autonomous robot. The final phase of this research will test an autonomous social robot companion in homes. The focus will be on family-robot inter-personal connections for long-term use and acceptance. The in-home field deployments of the robot will be up to six months in duration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.