User Expectations of Privacy in Robot Assisted Therapy
ORCID
May: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8275-6773
MSU Affiliation
College of Arts and Sciences; Department of Sociology; James Worth Bagley College of Engineering; Department of Computer Science and Engineering; Social, Therapeutic, and Robotic Systems (STaRS) Lab; Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems; Social Science Research Center
Creation Date
2026-06-01
Abstract
This article describes ethical issues related to the design and use of social robots in sensitive contexts like psychological interventions and provides insights from one user design study and two controlled experiments with adults and children. User expectations regarding privacy with a therapeutic robotic dog, Therabot, gathered from a 16 participant design study are presented. Furthermore, results from 142 forensic interviews about bullying experiences conducted with children (ages 8 to 17) using three different social robots (Nao, Female RoboKind, Male RoboKind) and humans (female and male) as forensic interviewers are examined to provide insights into child beliefs about privacy and social judgment in sensitive interactions with social robots. The data collected indicates that adult participants felt a therapeutic robotic dog would be most useful for children in comparison to other age groups, and should include privacy safeguards. Data obtained from children after a forensic interview about their bullying experiences shows that they perceive social robots as providing significantly more socially protective factors than adult humans. These findings provide insight into how children perceive social robots and illustrate the need for careful considerationwhen designing social robots that will be used in sensitive contexts with vulnerable users like children.
Publication Date
3-26-2019
Publication Title
Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics
Publisher
De Gruyter Brill
First Page
140
Last Page
159
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Henkel, Z., Baugus, K., Bethel, C. & May, D. (2019). User expectations of privacy in robot assisted therapy. Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, 10(1), 140-159. https://doi.org/10.1515/pjbr-2019-0010
