Public perception of socially assistive robots for healthcare in the EU: A large-scale survey.

This paper presents the results of a large-scale survey (n = 1092) that explored the attitudes and opinions of European Citizens regarding the adoption of socially assistive robots (SARs) for healthcare in the EU. We examined which functions citizens would support and which they consider a threat to trustworthy SARs. We additionally explored the relationships between the perceived vulnerability of the care recipient and acceptance, between attitudes towards robots and gender, age, religious beliefs, and previous experience interacting with SARs, and whether the degree of responsibility taken in performing a role affects acceptance.

Deploying a robotic positive psychology coach to improve college students' psychological well-being.

Despite the increase in awareness and support for mental health, college students' mental health is reported to decline every year in many countries. Several interactive technologies for mental health have been proposed and are aiming to make therapeutic service more accessible, but most of them only provide one-way passive contents for their users, such as psycho-education, health monitoring, and clinical assessment. We present a robotic coach that not only delivers interactive positive psychology interventions but also provides other useful skills to build rapport with college students.

A Robotic Companion for Psychological Well-being: A Long-term Investigation of Companionship and Therapeutic Alliance.

Social support plays a crucial role in managing and enhancing one's mental health and well-being. In order to explore the role of a robot's companion-like behavior on its therapeutic interventions, we conducted an eight-week-long deployment study with seventy participants to compare the impact of (1) a with only assistant-like skills, (2) a with additional instructive positive psychology interventions, and (3) a that delivered the same interventions in a peer-like and supportive manner. The companion-like robot was shown to be the most effective in building a positive therapeutic alliance with people, enhancing participants' well-being and readiness for change.

Liaison, safeguard, and well-being: Analyzing the role of social robots during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We examine the implementation of social robots in real-world settings during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we analyze the areas in which social robots are being adopted, the roles and tasks being fulfilled, and the robot models being implemented. For this, we traced back and analyzed 240 deployment cases with 86 different social robots worldwide that have been adopted since the coronavirus outbreak.

A Self-Guiding Tool to Conduct Research With Embodiment Technologies Responsibly.

The extension of the sense of self to the avatar during experiences of avatar embodiment requires thorough ethical and legal consideration, especially in light of potential scenarios involving physical or psychological harm caused to, or by, embodied avatars. We provide researchers and developers working in the field of virtual and robot embodiment technologies with a self-guidance tool based on the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). This tool will help them engage in ethical and responsible research and innovation in the area of embodiment technologies in a way that guarantees all the rights of the embodied users and their interactors, including safety, privacy, autonomy, and dignity.

Forward modelling the rubber hand: illusion of ownership modifies motor-sensory predictions by the brain.

The question of how we attribute observed body parts as our own, and the consequences of this attribution on our sensory-motor processes, is fundamental to understand how our brain distinguishes between self and other. Previous studies have identified interactions between the illusion of ownership, and multi-sensory integration and cross-sensory predictions by the brain. Here we show that illusory ownership additionally modifies the motor-sensory predictions by the brain.

The second me: Seeing the real body during humanoid robot embodiment produces an illusion of bi-location.

Whole-body embodiment studies have shown that synchronized multi-sensory cues can trick a healthy human mind to perceive self-location outside the bodily borders, producing an illusion that resembles an out-of-body experience (OBE). But can a healthy mind also perceive the sense of self in more than one body at the same time? To answer this question, we created a novel artificial reduplication of one's body using a humanoid robot embodiment system. We first enabled individuals to embody the humanoid robot by providing them with audio-visual feedback and control of the robot head movements and walk, and then explored the self-location and self-identification perceived by them when they observed themselves through the embodied robot.

The role of functionality in the body model for self-attribution.

Bodily self-attribution, the feeling that a body (or parts of it) is owned by me, is a fundamental component of one's self. Previous studies have suggested that, in addition to a necessary multi-sensory stimulation, the sense of body ownership is determined by the body model, a representation of our body in the brain. It is however unclear what features constitute the body representation.

The Relationship between Virtual Self Similarity and Social Anxiety.

In virtual reality (VR), it is possible to embody avatars that are dissimilar to the physical self. We examined whether embodying a dissimilar self in VR would decrease anxiety in a public speaking situation. We report the results of an observational pilot study and two laboratory experiments.

Presence and emotions in playing a group game in a virtual environment: the influence of body participation.

This study assesses the influence of body participation on the sense of presence and emotions, and the relationship between the two dependent variables in playing a group game in a virtual environment. A total of 56 volunteers were asked to play a virtual game in a 360-degree stereoscopic immersive interactive visualization environment using either body movement or a joystick. Presence was measured with the post hoc SUS Presence Questionnaire.

[Impact of interactivity on identification with characters in fiction].

The effect of interactivity on identification with characters in audiovisual fiction was observed. 310 participants were asked to watch a film in one of these two conditions: 1) interactive (they selected the plot), and 2) non-interactive (they consumed the fiction in a conventional way). After watching the movie, they completed a questionnaire with the EDI scale of identification and empathy with characters, created by Igartua and Paez.