Session 12: Case Studies
Thursday August 22, 15:30-16:00 CEST, Auditorium 3 (1441-113)
Naonori Kodate, University College Dublin, Ireland
Dr Nao Kodate is Associate Professor in Social Policy and Social Robotics, and the founding Director of UCD Centre for Japanese Studies (UCD-JaSt). His research straddles comparative healthcare politics and policy, and science & technology studies (STS). Key themes include: care and caring, health services research, systems thinking, safety & care quality, social robotics, welfare technologies, implementation science, and organizational learning. His recent research projects have been looking at the impact of digitalization and eHealth (e.g. robots) on care and caregiving, systems thinking for patient safety initiatives (e.g. incident reporting), and gender equality in science and technology education.
An Irish ‘Traveling’ Air-Purification Robot In a Care Home in Tokyo: Why Do humanities and Social Science Matter?
This paper examines the adoption process of an Irish air-purification robot in a nursing home in Japan. For the three-year project, researchers and engineers, interested in exploring human-robot interactions, formed a transdisciplinary team. Stemming from the concept of user-centered design, one original air purification robot was produced and tested in one care facility each in Ireland and Japan. The robot ’traveled’ from Dublin to Tokyo and spent three months working in a residential care home where its interactions with users were observed. Based on ’digital technography’ and ’matters of concern’, the paper describes the research processes, treating this as a journey of the robot, and how it was imagined (at the design stage in Ireland) and reimagined in a different cultural context (at the point of use in Japan). The paper refers to challenges that we as transdisciplinary researchers encountered along the way, while emphasizing the significance of deciphering the human ‘context’ in which AI and robotics are applied. The paper seeks to answer why humanities and social sciences research matter greatly.
Thursday August 22, 16:05-16:35 CEST, Auditorium 3 (1441-113)
Naonori Kodate, University College Dublin, Ireland
Dr Nao Kodate is Associate Professor in Social Policy and Social Robotics, and the founding Director of UCD Centre for Japanese Studies (UCD-JaSt). His research straddles comparative healthcare politics and policy, and science & technology studies (STS). Key themes include: care and caring, health services research, systems thinking, safety & care quality, social robotics, welfare technologies, implementation science, and organizational learning. His recent research projects have been looking at the impact of digitalization and eHealth (e.g. robots) on care and caregiving, systems thinking for patient safety initiatives (e.g. incident reporting), and gender equality in science and technology education.
Assessing the Impact of Transfer Robots on Care Work: the Case of POTARO in Toyota Memorial Hospital, Japan
The paper outlines the design of an international transdisciplinary research project ("Establishing Toyota-style Person-centered, Robotics-aided Care System (TPRoCS)") in partnership with Toyota’s Frontier Research Center and Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc. The main purpose of TPRoCS is to understand and assess the impact of assistive robots in the healthcare field, with a view to identifying an optimum implementation model for such technologies in care settings. The paper shows some of the preliminary findings from the first year of the study, particularly the interviews with the project leaders and engineers, examining how stakeholders worked together to ensure the environment in the new hospital building where the transport robots fit in with care professionals’ work patterns. The project aims to provide evidence on how assistive robots can affect professionals working in acute care settings in the short-, medium- and long-term and eventually contribute to enhancement of care quality in the hospital. Reflecting the integrative social robotics approach, the poster will touch upon vital issues such as unintended consequences, and value-centered and culturally sensitive design.
Thursday August 22, 16:40 - 17:10 CEST, Auditorium 3 (1441-113)
Katharina Kühne, University of Potsdam, Germany
Katharina Kühne is a PhD student of the Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group (PECoG). She holds a diploma in language teaching, a master’s degree in Linguistics and a master’s degree in Cognitive Psychology. Her research interests are social robotics, human-robot interaction, clinical neuropsychology, embodied language and number processing and bilingual language processing. Her expertise includes electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), grip force sensors as well as neuropsychological diagnostics and rehabilitation.
Laura Michelle Zimmer, University of Potsdam, Germany
Laura Zimmer is a psychology student at the university of Potsdam.
Melinda A. Jeglinski-Mende, University of Potsdam, Germany
Melinda A. Jeglinski-Mende is a doctoral candidate in the Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group (PECoG). She holds a Bachelor's degree in Linguistics from the University of Constance and a Master's degree from the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University. Her research interests span cognitive sciences and neuroscience, with a focus on numerical cognition, particularly the cognition of negative integers, and social neuroscience. She is proficient in EEG, ECG, breath measurement, GSR/skin conductance, and cortical stimulation techniques (TMS, tDCS, and tACS).
Oliver Bendel, FHNW School of Business, Switzerland
Oliver Bendel is Professor at the FHNW School of Business, Switzerland. He was born in 1968 in Ulm, Germany. After studying philosophy and German philology (M.A.) and information science (Dipl.-Inf.-Wiss.) at the University of Konstanz and gaining initial professional experience, he completed his doctorate in information systems at the University of St. Gallen (Dr. oec.). Bendel has worked in Germany and Switzerland as a project manager for new media and as a supervisor for engineering and science departments at several universities. He now works in Switzerland as a professor of information systems, information ethics, and machine ethics. It is from these perspectives that he primarily looks at AI systems and robots.
Yuefang Zhou, University of Potsdam, Germany
Dr Yuefang Zhou is currently a guest scientist at Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group (PECoG), University of Potsdam. She holds a master’s degree in Applied Research Methods (with Distinction) and a PhD in cultural adaptation. She also holds a postgraduate certificate in counselling studies (with Distinction, Counselling & Psychotherapy in Scotland). Between 2002 and 2016, she worked on a range of research areas including educational psychology (peer-assisted learning), social psychology (group identity and culture shock) and health psychology (healthcare communication). Dr Zhou moved to Germany in 2017 to explore her research interests on human-robot interaction (HRI). Specifically, her HRI research interests include social cognition in human-robot interaction, digital sexuality, human-robot touch interaction, and intimate relationships between humans and artificial partners.
Martin Fischer, University of Potsdam, Germany
Prof. Martin Fischer worked in Massachusetts, USA, from 1991 to 1996, where he investigated eye and body movements and their effects on spatial attention for his PhD. He then spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. In 1999, he moved to the University of Dundee in Scotland, where he spent 12 years working on various interdisciplinary topics, including poetry reception, humanoid robots, and numerical cognition. In 2011, he became a Full Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of Potsdam in Germany. His current research focuses on embodied cognition.
Robots at Arm’s Length - Unveiling the Dynamics of Interpersonal Distance Preferences in Human-Robot Interactions
In social interactions, interpersonal distance influences relationships, provides protection, and regulates arousal. Despite the intuitive nature of adopting specific distances, little is known about comfortable interpersonal distances with social robots. The talk reports on a study where 66 participants saw individuals standing face-to-face with a robot at different distances and pressed a button when seeing a woman or a man. In line with the negativity bias hypothesis, suggesting quicker reaction times to negative stimuli, participants showed a preference for increased distances, resulting in longer reaction times. Human-likeness of robots moderated the link between distance and arousal. The most human-like robot was less liked and evoked higher arousal. These findings potentially have implications for designing social robots and optimizing interactions, particularly in educational or medical contexts.