Interaction Expands Function

Mutual Shaping in the Design of Socially Assistive Robots: A Case Study on Social Robots for Therapy

“…For example, the PARO robot is primarily designed to reduce stress akin to animal therapy. 1 Chang and Sabanovic undertook long term observations of PARO being used in a care home, using a social shaping framework to understand social factors that affected its use [6]. Similar to the previous study, they found that use of the robot was influenced by situational factors such as the users' gender, and that robot use was often prompted by another social actor (e.g.…”

“…[19,22,24]), interviews [22], surveys [17] and observations (e.g. [6,12,30]). Lee et al give a good overview of the above practices as currently employed in robot design, with a focus on user participation in the design process [22].…”

“…Other works however have specifically employed a mutual shaping approach, either through observing users and robots in real social environments via ethnographic studies. [6,12,30]) or through attempting to actively involve users in robot design [1,22] or the shaping of robotics research [19].…”

“…empowerment, increased social interaction) and how this should be considered in its use [22]. Similarly, even those studies specifically following a mutual shaping framework have typically been focused on the use of ethnographic studies to generate observation data and understand mutual shaping of robot use on deployment [6,30] rather than during the design process, and hence given little opportunity for users or other stakeholders to voice their perspectives in SAR design. Works employing participatory design (e.g.…”

“…http://consequentialrobotics.com/miro/ 5. http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/kismet/ kismet.html 6. https://www.ald.softbankrobotics.com/en/robots/nao.…”