Acceptance of Social and Telepresence Robot Assistance in German Households

This work takes a look at different aspects of technical assistance systems acceptance (smart home, cleaning robots, telepresence and humanoid robots) in daily life in German homes. The use of smart home technologies is increasing as well as the development of social and telepresence robots to improve the life and care for people in need and the elderly. Research to develop a robot assisting in daily life by living in an average German household is less focused. This paper describes an approach to find out what Germans actually would like to have as technical support in their homes. Qualitative interviews to find important aspects of the use, the way such a robot should look like and work were conducted. Some interview partners already use smart home equipment. A quantitative questionnaire was used to reach a higher number of participants in order to get an overview about the distribution of the different opinions found in the interviews. The results indicate that Germans are not highly interested in having a robot in their own homes. Using telepresence robots seems to be even less interesting than a humanoid robot in their home. Otherwise, there was a wish for systems supporting the participants' health, for example by monitoring health data. Support to communicate with others was not wanted by many participants, nor that the robot should meet social needs. The main reasons against any robots were data security concerns and the question how a robot could enhance the participants' daily life.