Chita-Tegmark Meia, Scheutz Matthias
Tufts University, 200 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 01255 USA.
Int J Soc Robot. 2021;13(2):197-217. doi: 10.1007/s12369-020-00634-z. Epub 2020 Mar 2.
There is a close connection between health and the quality of one's social life. Strong social bonds are essential for health and wellbeing, but often health conditions can detrimentally affect a person's ability to interact with others. This can become a vicious cycle resulting in further decline in health. For this reason, the social management of health is an important aspect of healthcare. We propose that socially assistive robots (SARs) could help people with health conditions maintain positive social lives by supporting them in social interactions. This paper makes three contributions, as detailed below. We develop a framework of social mediation functions that robots could perform, motivated by the special social needs that people with health conditions have. In this framework we identify five types of functions that SARs could perform: (a) changing how the person is perceived, (b) enhancing the social behavior of the person, (c) modifying the social behavior of others, (d) providing structure for interactions, and (e) changing how the person feels. We thematically organize and review the existing literature on robots supporting human-human interactions, in both clinical and non-clinical settings, and explain how the findings and design ideas from these studies can be applied to the functions identified in the framework. Finally, we point out and discuss challenges in designing SARs for supporting social interactions, and highlight opportunities for future robot design and HRI research on the mediator role of robots.
健康与一个人的社会生活质量之间存在着紧密的联系。牢固的社会纽带对于健康和幸福至关重要，但健康状况往往会对一个人与他人互动的能力产生不利影响。这可能会形成一个恶性循环，导致健康状况进一步恶化。因此，健康的社会管理是医疗保健的一个重要方面。我们提出，社交辅助机器人（SARs）可以通过在社交互动中支持健康状况不佳的人，帮助他们维持积极的社会生活。本文有三个贡献，具体如下。我们基于健康状况不佳的人的特殊社会需求，开发了一个机器人可以执行的社会调解功能框架。在这个框架中，我们确定了社交辅助机器人可以执行的五种功能类型：（a）改变他人对该人的看法，（b）增强该人的社交行为，（c）改变他人的社交行为，（d）为互动提供结构，以及（e）改变该人的感受。我们对临床和非临床环境中关于机器人支持人际互动的现有文献进行了主题组织和综述，并解释了这些研究的结果和设计理念如何应用于框架中确定的功能。最后，我们指出并讨论了设计用于支持社交互动的社交辅助机器人所面临的挑战，并强调了未来机器人设计和人机交互研究在机器人调解角色方面的机会。
