CAREER: Toward Effective Automated Robot Nudges to Promote Older Adult Health

This project will design and test robotic nudging systems for older adult health. Nudging means gentle prodding toward some desired behavior. Human-centered design and working with performing artists will help this project to succeed. The design space of nudging is vast, but robots can immediately help in hydration support. (Future work could consider topics like supporting exercise, or even a healthy diet.) In the U.S., 55.8 million older adults could value this type of help. Computer-based reminder tools can support similar tasks, but their use does not last. Robots can help more because of their social appearance, unique interactions, and tirelessness. Yet, the study of robots in real-world environments over long time periods is rare. Thus, society has not yet benefitted from these promising robot nudges. New work is needed to harness unique robot strengths to support long-term nudging. This project has the potential to improve the quality of life for many through the use of robot nudges. The project’s efforts will contribute to advances in health-related human-robot interaction (HRI). This benefit will come from robotic systems that can support healthy human behavior change in real-world and long-term use. The project has the following specific objectives. (1) The work will include human-centered design of robotic systems appropriate for end user needs. (2) The effort will design personalized and adaptive nudging that extends the lifetime of robot use. (3) The final evaluation will be a real-world user-study-based evaluation in settings seldom reached by HRI research. This project will make complementary educational impacts. It will fuel new course design, HRI researcher training, and creative dissemination of findings. These educational efforts will inform future research directions. Robot-supported healthy hydration is the initial underpinning example application for the proposed objectives. The research and education tasks under this domain will map to more nudging topics throughout the investigator’s career. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.