Social robots do not deliver what they advertise
Whether robots can serve as social companions in old age or already in everyday life is still a future utopia. At the very least, current devices marketed with this claim are disappointing, as a study by the Vienna University of Technology shows.
Robots marketed as social companions of the future mostly do not fulfill the expectations placed on them. This is the conclusion reached by Astrid Weiss from the Human-Computer Interaction Research Unit at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) in their current study.
Intended use is missing
"It's not due to any particular shyness about getting involved with robots. The phenomenon has nothing to do with hostility to technology. But there is simply a lack of concrete applications suitable for everyday use," says Weiss. At the beginning, such a device seems interesting, but after a few weeks, many people hardly use the robot at all.
For seven months, Weiss and her team studied eight different households that received a social robot. The households had different social backgrounds, but were basically technology-savvy. They wanted to find out how the interaction between people and robots changes over time.
Entertaining but useless
The results were clear - and sobering for robot manufacturers: In the beginning, the robots had a certain entertainment value, they were tried out and shown off, but after only a few weeks this enthusiasm wore off and most of the robots were no longer used. Increased use also failed to materialize during the Covid 19 lockdowns.
