Given the increasing challenges in today’s healthcare landscape, the role of health promotion and care delivery in home settings is gaining importance. Social robots have emerged as promising tools to support this shift, offering assistance, motivation, and companionship to patients and caregivers. However, their integration into home-based healthcare remains limited. To understand the underlying reasons, this study systematically reviews the literature, identifying the enablers and barriers to the deployment and use of social robots in home environments. Seven electronic databases (Medline, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Google Scholar) were searched in June 2023 and July 2024. After screening and eligibility assessment, 39 studies, involving actual human-robot interaction and conducted in real home environments, were included and appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Data extracted from these studies were synthesized thematically. The results show that all studies were conducted in high-income countries, with most focusing on older adults and employing high-cost, anthropomorphic robots that were rarely co-designed with users. The findings suggest that the deployment and use of social robots are shaped by an interplay of the characteristics of interaction, context, robot, and user. They also point to a lack of holistic consideration of these characteristics, limited attention to ethical and legal aspects, and insufficient stakeholder inclusion in current design and implementation practices. To address these limitations, future research may benefit from ecological, participatory, speculative, and performative design approaches that support the development of more inclusive, adaptive, and ethical social robots for home-based healthcare. ... Read more

Recent developments in health research increasingly frame health as relational and situated - emerging through interactions among bodies, environments, institutions, and technologies. Translating this into the design of robotic care technologies, particularly those involving movement-based Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), remains a challenge. This paper proposes a relational approach to the design of movement-based robotic systems for health and care contexts that integrates the knowledge and expertise of the performing arts, alongside care stakeholders. First, we describe our methodological approach for integrating the performing arts into relational HRI design for health applications, focusing on Fizzy (a minimalistic, robotic ball that supports health promotion and caregiving to older adults) as a design case. Drawing from two interdisciplinary studies, we analyse how Speculative Enactments (SE) and Participatory Design (PD) can inform the design of movement-based HRI from a relational standpoint. Second, we report on three design lessons learned during these studies: (1) take your lead from the materiality of the robotic platform, (2) frame encounters to steer the interpretation in specific ways, (3) attend to emergent movement patterns in situated interactions. Together, these methodological and design insights contribute to a relational approach for designing movement-based robotic technologies that support health and wellbeing through embodied, situated encounters. ... Read more

Social robots have become increasingly prominent in the realm of physical activity promotion. However, the technological complexity and primarily anthropomorphic designs of these robots pose challenges for their application in everyday settings. This study positions spherical robots as an emerging subtype of social robots and explores their potential to promote physical activity at home by identifying useful behavioral design patterns. To this end, we engaged theater professionals and human-robot interaction researchers in a 4-day workshop, leveraging a speculative design methodology. A puppeteer controlling a robotic ball and two actors improvised human-robot encounters in a staged home setting. These encounters were analyzed to identify instances where the ball triggered physical activity. From this analysis, we extracted nine design patterns that articulate robot behaviors for initiating physical interaction. Additionally, our findings revealed that these patterns could be combined into complex sequences to sustain physical activities, which are experienced as meaningful when framed within a narrative. We discuss the contents of these patterns and their potential value for home-based healthcare applications. Our contribution lies in articulating the potential of spherical robots for promoting physical activity at home through design patterns informed by a performative approach to human-robot interaction. ... Read more