Speakers

A participatory approach for personalizing data and privacy management of care robots

Participatory and user-centred approaches for involving older persons throughout the design process of digital technologies and Social-Assistive Robots (SARs) is considered a best practice for designing beneficial and acceptable technologies. Nevertheless, negative discourses on ageing and ageism are potential underlying factors that may influence how older persons are involved in designing SARs and eventually how they are designed and used. Whereas personalization is increasingly discussed as a facilitator for advancing the development and acceptance of SARs, biases in involving the end-users might hinder the potential for realizing personalization. 

In this workshop I will discuss and present how the use of participatory design can enhance the implementation of personalization by presenting resent research conducted on personalized data and privacy management of a care robot for older persons. Particularly, I will discuss the current gaps and paradoxes in achieving personalization for data management for care robots, and SARs in general, and potential limitations this might create for successful adoption of SARs. 

Ittay Mannheim is a Social & Organizational Psychologist and social Geron-technology Researcher on ageing, ageism and digital technology. Currently, Ittay is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Communication Studies and ABC multidisciplinary robotics lab at Ben Gurion University, Be’er Sheva, Israel, and Open Universieit, Heerlen, the Netherlands. Ittay’s dissertation entitled "Ageism in the Use and Design of Digital Technology" was completed at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, as part of the 'EuroAgeism’ Innovative Training Network. He has previously worked at the Division for Research on Aging at the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, where his work focused on loneliness, early detection of dementia, and legal guardianship. Ittay's current research focuses on further investigating the manifestations of ageism in the use and design of digital technology, particularly in the context of assistive-social robots, datafication processes, interventions to reduce ageism and policy implications. More so, Ittay’s research makes use of a mixed-methods approach, working in inter-disciplinary teams and investigating the use of participatory design to promote equality and social change.  

Understandable Robots – for Young and Old 

As robots advance technologically, they are used in diverse applications ranging from education to health care, including assisted living or elder care homes. Such robots must be understandable  or interpretable by the interacting human, i.e., a human has to understand the robot’s actions, intentions, limitations, task progress etc. Robot understandability increases user experience, efficiency and safety. In this presentation we will discuss how robot understandability is contextual or situational and how methods can be developed for a robot to detect that a human potentially does not understand and then adjust its behavior to increase interpretability. 

Suna Bensch is an Associate Professor at Umeå University in Sweden and holds a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science. Her current research centers around Human-Robot Interaction, in particular Understandable or Explainable Robotics. She recently completed nationally funded research projects in Natural Language Processing and was part of a European project developing robots for elder care.   

User-centered visualizations for personalized robots supporting older adults

This talk examines how data visualization techniques, commonly applied in clinical test results and blood pressure management, can be integrated with robotic technology. We will discuss how personalized robots, equipped with intuitive visual interfaces, can offer older adults clearer, actionable insights into their health data. This integration aims to enhance their understanding and engagement with their wellness routines through various mHealth solutions, such as patient portals, conversational agents, and mobile applications.

Renato F. L. Azevedo, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Gerontology and Epidemiology & Biostatics (EPIBIO) Department, and a Core-Faculty of the Social Sciences & Medicine Core, Precision One Health at University of Georgia (UGA). Dr. Azevedo earned his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with a focus on Cognitive Sciences of Teaching and Learning and Educational Statistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He completed his Postdoctoral Training at the Human Factors and Aging Laboratory within the College of Applied Health Sciences, at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). 

His research is dedicated to the investigation of relationships among cognition, decision-making, risk perception, aging, and expertise in domains such as health, education, and behavioral accounting/economics. His work often focuses on the design, development and use of human-centered technological interventions and data visualizations to facilitate positive behavior changes, successful decision-making, promoting health, education, and wellness, which often includes how technology can ameliorate inequities. As postdoctoral research associate, Dr. Azevedo was the Illinois site lead for a US National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded multisite randomized controlled trial (RCT), a multidisciplinary project focuses on developing technology-based systems to improve medication adherence for hypertensive older adults. In another NIH-funded RCT, Renato is also part of a multidisciplinary team conducting needs assessments and usability tests to redesign health technology for people with mild cognitive impairment. He holds leadership positions within the American Psychological Association (Division 21 – Applied Experimental & Engineering Psychology), serving as the representative of members-at-large, webmaster, and the upcoming Program Chair for the 2025 Annual Convention.

https://publichealth.uga.edu/faculty-member/renato-ferreira-leitao-azevedo/ 

Sensing for Change – The opportunities and challenges for Embodied AI to realise safe and adaptive assistive robots.

Assistive and rehabilitation robots offer the possibility of providing more frequent and flexible support to help people self-manage their activities of daily living and rehabilitation more independently. However, given that people’s sensory and physical conditions are likely to change over time, it is important to measure and track any changes that will contribute to intelligent adaptation of the level and type of functional support and therapy that an assistive robot can provide.  In this talk, Prof Caleb-Solly will cover her research on intelligent sensing, embodied AI for assistive and rehabilitation robotics, and how digital twins are being considered in this context to create, learn and maintain a multi-dimensional, personalised health profile, that can evolve with a person, and be able to predict and simulate adaptations for short- and long-term changes in conditions.

Praminda Caleb-Solly is Professor of Embodied Intelligence at the University of Nottingham in the UK where she leads the Cyber-physical Health and Assistive Robotics Technologies (CHART) https://www.chartresearch.org/  research group. She is also the University of Nottingham Academic Lead for the National Rehabilitation Centre. She holds a BEng in Electronic Systems Engineering, MSc in Biomedical Instrumentation Engineering and a PhD in Interactive Evolutionary Computation. Prior to joining Nottingham, she was Professor of Assistive Robotics and Intelligent Health Technologies at the Bristol Robotics Lab, UK. From 2014 to 2018, she was also Head of Electronics and Computer Systems at Designability, an SME who design Assistive Technology. Prof Caleb-Solly's portfolio of funded projects includes designing and evaluating socially and physically assistive robotics and Internet of Things sensor-based intelligence. Her research is focused on the use of intelligent assistive robotics to support inclusion and accessibility. She currently leads a national UK research council Health Technologies Network+ programme, EMERGENCE, Robotics for Frailty which facilitates the design and development of intelligent systems to cope with challenges of real-world environments and complex user needs, and is part of the NIHR Rehab Healthtech Research Centres, leading the Enabling Participation theme.  She has also been the Alan Turing Institute AccessibleAI@Nottingham network lead and CoI on a Trustworthy and Autonomous Systems project on investigating future workforce skills development for Robotics and AI. She is part of the ISO TC299/WG2 Service Robot Safety and BSI AMT/10 Robot Ethics Working Groups. She is also co-director and co-founder of an SME, Robotics for Good, a Community Interest Company.