Elderly Attitudes Towards Service Robot Appearance

Abstract

John Hudson et al analyse people's attitudes to robots to be used in caring for the elderly using Eurobarometer data relating to November/December 2014 on approximately 1000 people in each EU country and found results different with the age. [1]Besides, robots as the synonymous product with high-tech, most of the domestic research has focused on the technical problems. Study about robot appearance ethics and aesthetics is few. So the purpose of this article is just to discuss the issue about eldely attitude to robot appearance. It extracted the mainly two relevant effect factors through referring to literature review and combining with overseas research experience in this field. The conclusion is that when to design robot appearance should take user’s age into account and clarify what service do the elderly want to get from the robot. Another factor that cannot be ignored is the influence of social context. So to design service robot for the future potential users who are growing up under the exposure of science fiction frequently also need to keep paying attention to appearance changes of the robot in the literature and art works.