Enhancing the interactive services of a telepresence robot for AAL: Developments and a psycho-physiological assessment

Abstract

This paper describes the work done on a telepresence robot named GIRAFF and part of a telecare AAL system derived from the GIRAFFPLUS project for supporting and monitoring elderly people at home. Specifically, from the long term trials in real houses, a number of user requirements have emerged that inspired changes and improvements on the robotic platform. The implementation of both multimodal communication capabilities and enhanced information services introduced new interesting questions related to human-robot interaction and specifically to usability, valence of interaction, and cognitive load required to interact with and through the robot. An experimental session based on a combination of physiological and psychological methods showed that the enhanced platform is usable, the interaction pleasant and the required workload limited. The analysis of psychophysiological correlates supported the findings from self-report measures and provides further information. It has been possible to discriminate physiological responses between multimodal interaction and the use of new services. Specifically, while usability can be specifically related to the usage of multichannel commands, positive emotions elicited by the interaction with GIRAFF seems to be mostly ascribable to the usage of services provided for the communication with another person.