Assessment of Distraction and the Impact on Technology Acceptance of Robot Monitoring Behaviour in Older Adults Care

People's successful coexistence with robots strictly depends on people's acceptance of robots' presence in their daily activities. This is particularly relevant when the robot's actions may interfere with or intrude on people's activities, creating discomfort and possible rejection. We believe that people's acceptance of a robot may vary depending on the activities they are involved in. In this study, we investigate the impact of a robot's actions on people's engagement in an activity while the robot has the task of monitoring them. We observed the behaviours of 18 older adults with respect to the robot while they were carrying out tasks that require different cognitive workloads (e.g., working at the PC, talking on the phone). We used subjective and objective metrics, such as social cues, to evaluate people's engagement in the robot and their disengagement in their own tasks. We observed that people were distracted by the robot's behaviours based on the cognitive loads required by their activity. Our results show that variation in people's engagement in the robot and the task is affected by their perception of the usefulness of and trust in the robot, and by individuals' personality traits and acceptance of the robot. People with higher trust in the robot, and a higher degree of conscientiousness and emotional stability, tend to continue with their task, paying less attention to the robot. We observed, in contrast, that a robot perceived as a social entity caught more easily their attention when people have a higher extroverted personality. Our findings also showed that variations in the affective and emotional demeanour of the participants are a predictor of their distraction to an external observer.