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SnuggleBot
We explored the use of three robot interaction strategies to support people living with loneliness (physical comfort, social engagement, requiring care), by building these into a robot prototype and deploying the robots into homes for long-term evaluation. We placed our original prototype, SnuggleBot, unsupervised into the homes of seven people for at least 7 weeks (optionally up to 6 months), with bi-weekly interviews, to investigate how people engage with our three robot interaction strategies. Our qualitative analysis illuminated how people engaged the robot based on all three interaction strategies. Further, some participants showed signs of bonding with the robot as well as self-reported wellbeing benefits, while some participants failed to achieve sustained use over time. Our results provide strong support for future research into robots developed with our interaction strategies, and general potential for supporting wellbeing.
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Project Publications
Caring for a Robot, to Care for You
RCDW'24 (RoboCare Design Workshop: Understanding, Translating, Operationalizing, and Scaling Up Design Knowledge Regarding Robotic Systems for Care Assistance)
SnuggleBot the Companion: Exploring In-Home Robot Interaction Strategies
Danika Passler Bates, Skyla Y. Dudek, James M. Berzuk, Adriana Lorena González, and James E. Young. 2024. SnuggleBot the Companion: Exploring In-Home Robot Interaction Strategies to Support Coping With Loneliness. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’24), July 01–05, 2024, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.366070
SnuggleBot: a Cuddly Companion Robot for Lonely People to use at Home
Danika Lorraine Passler Bates. SnuggleBot: a Cuddly Companion Robot for Lonely People to use at Home. MSc Thesis (2023). University of Manitoba, Canada.
SnuggleBot: A Simple Cuddly Companion Robot Prototype
Danika Passler Bates, James E. Young. 2022. SnuggleBot: A simple cuddly companion robot prototype. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Designerly HRI, at the ACM International Conference of Human Robot Interaction (HRI'22), 3 pages.
SnuggleBot: A Novel Cuddly Companion Robot Design
Danika Passler Bates, James E. Young. 2020. SnuggleBot: A Novel Cuddly Companion Robot Design. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI’20), November 10-13, 2020, Virtual Event, NSW, Australia. ACM, 3 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3406499.3418772
