Benefits and Barriers to Emerging Technologies to Promote Health, Well-Being, and Independence of Older Adults

Emerging technologies, such as voice assistant systems and artificial companion robots, hold a great deal of promise for improving the health, wellbeing, and independence of older adults. However, these solutions will likely be ineffective in the absence of research to understand barriers to the adoption and use of these technologies and without an exploration of the needs and preferences of older adults. This symposium focuses on both the potential of such technologies and factors that may affect their success. H. Spangler will present a detailed analysis of privacy concerns of older adults, with and without cognitive impairment, related to the use of Voice Assistant Systems (VAS). R. Nicholson will discuss the potential of a VAS app for promoting exercise among older adults and their caregivers to enhance mobility independence, with a focus on perceived benefits and dislikes about the app that may impact use. Finally, C. Berridge will present an exploration of perceptions of and attitudes toward artificial companion (AC) robots across the lifespan, before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, including concerns about privacy. Together, these talks will highlight novel methods through which emerging technologies can support older adults and issues to consider if these methods are to produce meaningful change.

Comfort and Data Sharing With Artificial Companion Robots Among an Online Cohort

Results from a June 2020 survey on comfort with two forms of artificial companion (AC) robots in normal compared with pandemic times will be presented. 1,082 adults age 21-92 (mean 64) completed the online survey for a response rate of 45%. Significantly greater comfort is reported with small AC robots relative to larger human-shaped robots in both normal and pandemic times. In bivariate and adjusted models, younger age and male gender were most commonly associated with greater comfort with AC robots. Most participants (68.7%) did not think an AC robot would make them feel less lonely. About half (52.8 %) of the participants reported that they probably or definitely would want their facial expressions to be read, while a minority (15.0%) were at least somewhat comfortable with AC robots recording their conversations. The most common person participants wanted these data types shared with is themselves, a spouse/partner, and medical provider.

"A Robot Is Watching You”: Humanoid Robots And The Different Impacts On Privacy

Robots, particularly the ones that belong to a special type of robotic technologies designed and deployed for communicating and interacting with humans, slip into more and more domains of human life - from the research laboratories and operating rooms to our kitchens, bedrooms, and offices. They can interact with humans with facial expressions, gaze directions, and voices, mimicking the affective dynamics of human relationships. As a result, they create new opportunities, but also new challenges and risks to peoples’ privacy. The literature on privacy issues in the context of Social Companion Robots (SCRs) is poor and has a strong focus on information privacy and data protection. It has given, however, less attention to other dimensions of privacy, e.g. physical, emotional, or social privacy. This article argues for an “evolving” or “transformable” notion of privacy, as opposed to the “elusive” concept of privacy elaborated by leading privacy theorists such as Daniel J. Solove (2008) and Judith J. Thomson (1975). In other words, rather than assuming that privacy has a single core or definition (as defined, e.g., in Warren and Brandeis' 1890 paper), it maintains that it is important to conceptualize privacy as distinguishable into various aspects, including informational privacy, the privacy of thoughts and actions, and social privacy. This inductive approach makes it possible to identify new dimensions of privacy and therefore effectively respond to the rapid technological evolution in AI technologies which is constantly introducing new spheres of privacy intrusions.

Emotion Generation and Transition of Companion Robots Based on Plutchik’s Model and Quantum Circuit Schemes

Loneliness and isolation are on the rise worldwide, threatening human well-being and the wellness of different age groups and backgrounds. Notably, global social distancing measures during the COVID-19 crisis have exacerbated this problem, resulting in various psychological and physiological ailments. Within both the categories of social and medical robots, companion robots are capable of engaging emotionally with users and providing continuous monitoring and assessment of their health. In this study, we propose a framework for modeling the emotion space of companion robots to facilitate their emotion generation and transition based on Plutchik’s wheel of emotions and reversible quantum circuit schemes. Superposition encodings allow fewer computing resources for the generation and storage of emotional states, and by using unitary operations, they facilitate easier emotion transition and recovery over different intervals. Further, an encryption strategy is designed based on the emotion communication architecture to secure the emotion-related data in human-robot interaction. It is hoped that such an integrative framework and research agenda exploring the role of companion robots will be useful to care for users’ social health by mitigating their negative emotions, especially during difficult times.

Needs and Preferences of Middle-Aged and Older Adults in Taiwan for Companion Robots and Pets: Survey Study

Background In recent years, robots have been considered a new tech industry that can be used to solve the shortage in human resources in the field of health care. Also, animal-assisted therapy has been used to provide assistance, companionship, and interaction among the elderly and has been shown to have a positive impact on their emotional and psychological well-being. Both pets and robots can provide dynamic communication and positive interaction patterns. However, preferences for middle-aged and older adults in this regard are not clear. Objective This study explored the degree of acceptance of robots and pets as partners in later life and to determine the needs and preferences of elderly individuals related to companion robots. Methods A total of 273 middle-aged and older adults aged ≥45 years and living in the community were invited to answer a structured questionnaire after watching a companion robot video. Sociodemographic data, physical health status and activities, experience with technology, eHealth literacy, and acceptance and attitude toward robots and pets were recorded and analyzed using multinomial logistic regression analysis. Results Age, level of education, type of dwelling, occupation, retirement status, number of comorbidities, experience with pets, experience using apps, and eHealth literacy were significantly associated with acceptance of robots and pets. Middle-aged and older women preferred robots with an animal-like appearance, while men preferred robots that resembled a human adult. In terms of robot functions, participants preferred a companion robot with dancing, singing, storytelling, or news-reporting functions. Participants’ marital status and whether or not they lived alone affected their preference of functions in the companion robot. Conclusions Findings from this study inform the development of social robots with regard to their appearance and functions to address loneliness in later life in fast-aging societies.

Toward an Affective Sense of Life: Artificial Intelligence, Animacy, and Amusement at a Robot Pet Memorial Service in Japan

This essay analyzes the organization of Buddhist memorial services for robot pets in Japan against the backdrop of emerging markets for robots equipped with artificial emotional intelligence. It demonstrates how an evocative “sense of life” (seimeikan) becomes both a target of design for robotics engineers and an affective capacity of robot users who care for and through companion robots. Documenting how users cultivate a sense of amusement toward robots that neither neglects nor negates analytical distinctions between the artificial and the living but rather playfully holds them together in the figure of a living robot, the article illustrates how practices of care become affective tools for understanding life altered by developments in AI. Such findings render animacy as an open and exercisable capacity, responsive to technoscientific change, and generative of theoretical inspiration for how anthropologists might similarly exercise affect as a particularly productive method of fieldwork within machine-inclusive multispecies societies. 抄録 本論文は 感情認識AI（人工知能）を搭載した一般消費者向けロボットの登場を背景に営まれるようになった日本におけるペットロボットの法要について考察するものである。特に「生命感」の喚起がいかにロボット開発におけるデザインのターゲットになると同時に、ユーザーがロボットとケアを介した関係性を結ぶ際の情動的能力の所産の対象にもなっているかということを明らかにする。ロボットと接するなかでユーザー達は分析的に対置される人工物と生命体との違いを無視したり否定したりするのではなく、むしろそれらを享楽的に結合させてロボットの存在を捉えるアミューズメントの心を高めている。この記述を通して、本論文はロボットへのケアの実践が人工知能の発展によって変わりつつある生命のあり方を理解する情動的手段になっていることを描き出す。このような知見は、対象物に生物性や生物らしさを感じるアニマシーの知覚が柔軟で状況に応じて発揮することが可能な能力であり、科学技術の変化にも応じることが出来るということを表しているだけでなく、機械を含むマルチ・スピーシーズ社会における有益なフィールドワークの手法として人類学者自身もどのように情動をうまく取り込むことができるかという理論的な閃きを生成する契機にもなったのである。