Design and Development of a Physical and a Virtual Embodied Conversational Agent for Social Support of Older Adults
Marieke Peeters (TNO)
Vivian Genaro Motti (George Mason University)
Helena Frijns (Universiteit Leiden)
Siddharth Mehrotra (International Institute of Information Technology)
Tugce Akkoc (Boğaziçi University)
Sena Büşra Yengec (Yιldιrιm Beyazιt University)
Oguz Calik (Atιlιm University)
Mark Neerincx (TNO, TU Delft - Interactive Intelligence)
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Abstract
Populations in developed societies show an increasingly higher life expectancy across the globe. To support older adults to live longer and healthier lives in the familiar surroundings of their homes, technological developments, such as robots and avatars, have a great potential. To investigate long-term interactions between older adults and a "bi-bodied conversational agent" (an agent that has both an avatar and a robot embodiment), a user-centred design approach was employed in the design and development of a conversational agent. Firstly, the requirements of the agent were elicited through a set of focus groups with the target users – older adults. Then, the agent was iteratively designed and implemented: a robot body and avatar body were created. Finally, a Wizard-of-Oz control panel was created to control and compare each of the two bodies. Current research outcomes describe the elicited requirements baseline of a bi-bodied conversational agent for older adults. Future research involves the use of this set-up to investigate long-term interaction between older adults and a bibodied conversational agent.