Exploring Older Adults’ Acceptance, Needs, and Design Requirements towards Applying Social Robots in a Rehabilitation Context

This paper presents a qualitative study that uses video prototypes and interviews to explore older adults’ acceptance, needs, and design requirements towards a social robotic application for physical rehabilitation. Our study identified the benefits of applying social robots (SR) in physical rehabilitation. Further, we discovered participants’ preference for an anthropomorphic social robot design. The data revealed a desire for social interaction could increase motivation for older adults to engage in an active lifestyle and social robot acceptance. However, participants showed low motivation for technology adoption and negatively anthropomorphize the social robot, which lowers acceptance for their application. This work complements the current user-centered explorations with SR in rehabilitation, and provides considerations for SR design for rehabilitative applications.