Age-Related Differences in the Perception of Eye-Gaze from a Social Robot

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in social robots assisting older adults during daily life tasks. In this context, non-verbal cues such as deictic gaze are important in natural communication in human-robot interaction. However, the sensibility to deictic-gaze declines naturally with age and results in a reduction in social perception. Therefore, this work explores the benefits of deictic gaze from social robots assisting older adults during daily life tasks, and how age-related differences may influence their social perception in contrast to younger populations. This may help on the design of adaptive age-related non-verbal cues in the Human-Robot Interaction context.