Validating an Evaluation Tool to Assess Older People’s Acceptance Towards a Humanoid Robot Companion: A University of the Third Age Pilot Study

User acceptance of technology can be defined as the user’s demonstrable willingness to employ a technology for the tasks it is designed to provide support. To better understand the factors that foster or hinder people’s interaction with a particular technology, acceptance models such as TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) or the UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) are commonly used. However, in the case of humanoid social and service robotics these models may have some drawbacks, as the acceptance towards such robots not only depends on their functions and capabilities but on their shape and movement capability. For that reason, if acceptance models are intended to be used for robot evaluation, it is necessary to adequately design and pilot them in order to have well tested evaluation tools prior to hands-on technology assessment. With that aim, this work presents a pilot study which has been carried out with a group of elderly students at the university of the third age - Programa de la Experiencia of the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca. The goal is to select the most suitable tools found in the literature to assess the acceptance of a companion robot for the elderly, which is currently under development, and to test the suitability of these tools before conducting experiments with the real robotic platform.