COLLOQUIUM
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of South Carolina

Aging in Place: 
The Potential for Robots as Assistive Technology
Jenay M. Beer
School of Psychology
Georgia Institute of Technology

Date: March 20, 2013
Time: 1430-1530 (2:30pm-3:30pm)
Place: Swearingen 2A31

Abstract

Many older adults wish to remain in their own homes as they age.
However, challenges threaten an older adult’s ability to age in
place, and even healthy independently living older adults experience
challenges in maintaining their home. Challenges with aging in place
can be compensated through technology, such as home assistive robots.
However, for home robots to be adopted by older adult users they must
be designed to meet older adults’ needs for assistance and the
older users must be amenable to robot assistance for those needs.  In
this talk, I will discuss a range of projects (both quantitative and
qualitative in nature) assessing older adults’ social
interpretation, attitudes, and acceptance of assistive robotics.
Study findings suggest that older adults’ assistance preferences
discriminated between tasks, and the data suggest insights as to why
older adults hold such preferences.  The talk will detail a
multidisciplinary approach to studying human-robot interaction (HRI)
and how findings from user studies can apply to preliminary design
recommendations for future assistive robots to support aging in place.

Jenay M. Beer is a 6th-year Ph.D. student in Engineering Psychology at
Georgia Tech. She is a member of the Human Factors and Aging
Laboratory, co-directed by Wendy A. Rogers and Arthur D. Fisk. Her
research intersects the fields of Human Robot Interaction (HRI) and
Psychology. Specifically, she studies home-based robots designed to
assist older adults to maintain their independence and age in
place. She has studied a variety of robotic systems and topics such as
emotion expression of agents, user acceptance of robots, healthcare
robotics, and the role of robot autonomy in HRI. Jenay received a
B.A. degree in Psychology from the University of Dayton, Ohio and an
M.S. in Engineering Psychology from Georgia Tech.