Acceptability of Tele-assistive Robotic Nurse for Human-Robot Collaboration in Medical Environment

This paper presents a novel acceptability study of a tele-assistive robotic nurse for human-robot collaboration in medical environments. We designed a telepresence robotic platform with multi-modal interaction framework, which provides haptic teleoperative control, gesture control, and voice command for the robotic system to achieve a mobile manipulative goal. We then performed a pilot user study to experience the robotic control scenarios and analyze the acceptability of our robotic system in terms of usability and safety criteria. This paper then presents the analysis results on surveys from 11 participants and concludes that the gesture-based control is the most difficult for users and the voice-based control is easier while safety is not assured.