Liaison, safeguard, and well-being: analyzing the role of social robots during the COVID-19 pandemic

TL;DR

This paper analyzes 240 cases of social robot deployment during COVID-19, highlighting their roles in crisis management, contact minimization, safety, and well-being support, providing a comprehensive overview of their real-world use.

Contribution

It offers the first extensive analysis of social robot applications during COVID-19, detailing their roles, deployment contexts, and impact on health and safety.

Findings

Robots were mainly used for crisis management and contact reduction.

They served as liaisons, safeguards, and well-being coaches.

Deployment was widespread across various settings during the pandemic.

Abstract

We examine the implementation of social robots in real-world settings during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we analyze the areas in which social robots are being adopted, the roles and tasks being fulfilled, and the robot models being implemented. For this, we traced back and analyzed 240 deployment cases with 86 different social robots worldwide that have been adopted since the coronavirus outbreak. We found that social robot adoption during this period was strongly related to the use of this technology for crisis management. The social robots' capacity to perform the roles of liaison to minimize direct contact among humans, safeguard to ensure contagion risk-free environments, and well-being coach to protect mental and physical health, is key to explaining adoption within this context. The results of the study offer a complete overview of social robots' utilization in real life settings during the pandemic.