The Effects of Internet of Robotic Things on In-home Social Family Relationships

Robotic things and social robots have been introduced into home, and they are expected to change the relationships between humans. Our study examines whether the introduction of robotic things or social robots, and the way that they are organized, can change the social relationship between family members. To observe this phenomenon, we designed a living lab experiment that simulated a home environment and recruited two families to participate. Families were asked to conduct home activities within two different types of Internet of Robotic Things(IoRT):1)internet of only robotic things(IoRT without mediator condition), and 2)internet of robotic things mediated by a social robot(IoRT with mediator condition). We recorded the interactions between the family members and the robotic things during the experiments and coded them into a dataset for social network analysis. The results revealed relationship differences between the two conditions. The introduction of IoRT without mediator motivated younger generation family members to share the burden of caring for other members, which was previously the duty of the mothers. However, this made the interaction network inefficient to do indirect interaction. On the contrary, introducing IoRT with mediator did not significantly change family relationships at the actor-level, and the mothers remained in charge of caring for other family members. However, IoRT with mediator made indirect interactions within the network more efficient. Furthermore, the role of the social robot mediator overlapped with that of the mothers. This shows that a social robot mediator can help the mothers care for other members of the family by operating and managing robotic things. Additionally, we discussed the implications for developing the IoRT for home.