Exploring the Influencing Factors on User Experience in Robot-Assisted Health Monitoring Systems Combining Subjective and Objective Health Data

Abstract

As the population ages, the demand for care for older adults is increasing. To maintain their independence and autonomy, even with declining health, assistive technologies such as connected medical devices or social robots can be useful. In previous work, we introduced a novel health monitoring system that combines commercially available products with apps designed specifically for older adults. The system is intended for the long-term collection of subjective and objective health data. In this work, we present an exploratory user experience (UX) and usability study we conducted with older adults as the target group of the system and with younger expert users who tested our system. All participants interacted with a social robot conducting a health assessment and tested sensing devices and an app for data visualization. The UX and usability of the individual components of the system were rated highly in questionnaires in all sessions. All participants also said they would use such a system in their everyday lives, demonstrating the potential of these systems for self-managing users’ health. Finally, we found factors such as previous experience with social robots and technological expertise to have an influence on the reported UX of the users.

Safe physical interaction with cobots: a multi-modal fusion approach for health monitoring

“…Comparing the results with existing methods, our proposed method consistently demonstrated superior performance across both datasets. The accuracy, recall, F1 score, and AUC obtained by our approach surpassed those of Nakadate et al ( 2011 ), Wei et al ( 2021 ), Neef et al ( 2022 , 2023 ), Salcudean et al ( 2022 ), and Su et al ( 2022 ). These results validate the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed method in health monitoring on the Open-i and MIMIC-III datasets.…”

The most used questionnaires for evaluating the usability of robots and smart wearables: A scoping review

“…The standardized nature of SUS enables consistent and comparable evaluations across different robots, fostering reliable insights into their usability. 46 , 59 , 60 , 62 Hesen 81 believed that, with a concise set of items, SUS minimizes respondent burden, ensuring quick and straightforward assessments. The questionnaire's versatility allows it to be applied to various robotic interfaces and applications, making it adaptable to the diverse functionalities of robotic systems.…”

Application of Social Robots in Healthcare: Review on Characteristics, Requirements, Technical Solutions

“…In this way, social robots become an essential partner during children’s education, assisting the elderly and impaired people that could present difficulties in establishing communication. For instance, Neef et al [ 28 ] have proposed a novel health monitoring system, based on the Pepper robot, exploiting its frontal touchscreen, customized Android application, and sensing device. The user experience and the data acquisition system have been evaluated demonstrating that less previous expertise determines a higher level of robot acceptance by the users (e.g., elderly and children have a lower level of expectations).…”

“…Humanoid robots NAO [16][17][18][19][20][21]; PEPPER [22][23][24][25][26][27][28]; ROBOTIS OP3 [29]; INMOOV [30]; KIRO [31]; ARASH [32]; RAPIRO [33]; BRIAN 2.1 [34]; KISMET [35].…”