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Abstract Social robots are increasingly being applied in hospitals assisting with tasks that conventionally require interpersonal interactions. An understanding of how social robots engage with users is crucial as this will inform any strength or weakness associated with the current engagement approaches. Prior reviews on healthcare social robots have mainly focused on summarising the types of services performed by the robots. We conducted a scoping review examining the dynamics of human-robot interactions (HRI) within a hospital setting. In particular, we provided an overview on the service contexts of the HRI, robot engagement behaviours, and interaction outcomes. The scoping review was conducted following the Arksey and O’Malley 5-step method and was reported using the PRISMA-ScR extension for scoping reviews. The analysis of 26 studies found that social robots delivered a wide range of hospital services to various users, from greeting and educating visitors to social companionship, supporting healthcare delivery, carrying goods, and training staff. The robots interacted with users using verbal and non-verbal behaviours to convey intentions and emotions. Personalised behaviours were adopted by some robots to tailor to the user needs and preferences. The HRI was mostly positive with high user satisfaction, good user engagement, and improved health outcomes. Frustration and fear towards the interactions were also reported by some users. Optimising multimodal and personalised engagement are potential avenues for achieving effective and warm HRI. Further focus on understanding the contexts of HRI could help support the implementation of social robots in hospital settings.
Zhu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.