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Social Companion Robots to Reduce Isolation: A Perception Change Due to COVID-19

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Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021 (INTERACT 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12933))

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Abstract

Social isolation is one of the negative consequences of a pandemic like COVID-19. Social isolation and loneliness are not only experienced by older adults, but also by younger people who live alone and cannot communicate with others or get involved in social situations as they used to. In such situations, social companion robots might have the potential to reduce social isolation and increase well-being. However, society’s perception of social robots has not always been positive. In this paper, we conducted two online experiments with 102 and 132 participants during the self isolation periods of COVID-19 (May-June 2020 and January 2021), to study how COVID-19 has affected people’s perception of the benefits of a social robot. Our results showed that a change caused by COVID-19, as well as having an older relative who lived alone or at a care center during the pandemic significantly and positively affected people’s perception of social robots, as companions, and that the feeling of loneliness can drive the purchase of a social robot. The second study replicated the results of the first study. We also discuss the effects of Big 5 personality traits on the likelihood to purchase a social robot, as well as on participants’ general attitude towards COVID-19 and adapting to the pandemic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that only a subset of these results, which were appropriate for the scope of this paper are discussed due to page limits.

  2. 2.

    Human Intelligence Task.

  3. 3.

    Participation was limited to Canada, where rules on social distancing were precisely defined and followed by the majority of people.

  4. 4.

    A Human Intelligence Task (HIT) is a task on Mechanical Turk (MTurk), which is completed by the volunteers on MTurk.

  5. 5.

    p-values were calculated through two linear models predicting stress and how much one follows rules based on participants’ personality traits.

  6. 6.

    Examples of participants’ quotes related to their perception change.

  7. 7.

    Note that visiting care centers by family members was prohibited during the time this study was conducted in Canada.

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Acknowledgements

This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada 150 Research Chairs Program and the Network for Aging Research at the University of Waterloo. We thank Sami Alperen Akgun for his help with the implementation of the questionnaire.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Moojan Ghafurian & Kerstin Dautenhahn

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Colin Ellard

  3. Department of Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Kerstin Dautenhahn

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  1. Moojan Ghafurian
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  2. Colin Ellard
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  3. Kerstin Dautenhahn
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Correspondence to Moojan Ghafurian .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Ardito

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Rosa Lanzilotti

  3. Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Alessio Malizia

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

    Helen Petrie

  5. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Antonio Piccinno

  6. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Giuseppe Desolda

  7. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

    Kori Inkpen

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Ghafurian, M., Ellard, C., Dautenhahn, K. (2021). Social Companion Robots to Reduce Isolation: A Perception Change Due to COVID-19. In: Ardito, C., et al. Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021. INTERACT 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12933. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85616-8_4

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