Social acceptance of a teleoperated android: field study on elderly's engagement with an embodied communication medium in denmark

  • Authors:

  • Ryuji Yamazaki;Shuichi Nishio;Hiroshi Ishiguro;Marco Nørskov;Nobu Ishiguro;Giuseppe Balistreri

  • Affiliations:

  • Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, Social Media Research Laboratory Group, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, Japan,School of Knowledge Science, ...;Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, Social Media Research Laboratory Group, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, Japan;Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, Social Media Research Laboratory Group, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, Japan,Department of Systems Innovat ...;Institute for Culture and Society - Philosophy, Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Denmark;Studies in Language and Society, Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University, Minoo, Osaka, Japan;Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica, Universit‘a degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo, Italia

  • Venue:
  • ICSR'12 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Social Robotics
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

We explored the potential of teleoperated android robots, which are embodied telecommunication media with humanlike appearances, and how they affect people in the real world when they are employed to express a telepresence and a sense of 'being there'. In Denmark, our exploratory study focused on the social aspects of Telenoid, a teleoperated android, which might facilitate communication between senior citizens and Telenoid's operator. After applying it to the elderly in their homes, we found that the elderly assumed positive attitudes toward Telenoid, and their positivity and strong attachment to its huggable minimalistic human design were cross-culturally shared in Denmark and Japan. Contrary to the negative reactions by non-users in media reports, our result suggests that teleoperated androids can be accepted by the elderly as a kind of universal design medium for social inclusion.