Acceptance of an Adaptive Nursing Assistant Robot for Ambulation Tasks

Effective use of nursing assistant robots requires understanding of key acceptance factors. The study examined the differences in attitudes among 58 nursing students while performing the ambulation tasks with and without an Adaptive Robot Nursing Assistant (ARNA) robot. ARNA is driven by tactile cues from the patient through a force-torque measuring handlebar, whose signals are fed into a neuro-adaptive controller to achieve a specific admittance behavior regardless of patient strength, weight, or floor incline. Ambulation tasks used two fall prevention devices: a gait belt and a full-body harness. The attitude toward the robot included perceived satisfaction, usefulness, and assistance, replacing the perceived ease of use construct found in the standard Technology Acceptance Model. The effects of external demographic variables on those constructs were also analyzed. The technology acceptance model was validated with the simultaneous estimation of the effects of perceived usefulness and assistance on the satisfaction employing an integrated hierarchical linear mixed effect regression model to analyze complex relationships between the model variables. The results suggest that students rated ARNA’s performance higher across all constructs compared to that of a human assistant. Male subjects rated perceived usefulness of the robot higher than females in a reduced model.