Time and date: 26 February 2025 at 2:00 pm | Location: Abacws 3.38 | Speaker: Aisha Gul
The global aging population is growing, leading to an increased need for unpaid carers to support older adults. Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) can play an important role in supporting unpaid carers. However, as with any socio-technical system, building and maintaining trust is critical for achieving full potential and adoption of a SAR. Despite the growing interest in robotics across various domains, there has been limited research on time-dependant patterns of trust. Trust plays an important role in determining whether both older adults and unpaid carers perceive SARs as reliable, safe, and beneficial in real-world care environments. This PhD research focuses on developing trustworthy human-robot interactions (HRI), where personalization and user preference-based interactions guide trustworthiness. Using both subjective and objective measures of trust, this research examines how SARs can be designed to ensure that personalization in verbal communication and interaction establish trust. By following a user-centered design approach, the research explores how SARs’ ability to align with individual preferences and engagement styles influences trust perception, ultimately contributing to the development of more reliable and acceptable robotic assistants in caregiving environments.
