A visit from a social robot improves hospitalized children’s outlook
newsroom.ucla.edu
newsroom.ucla.edu
Yes there is an ideal solution of having lots of volunteers to speak with the children, but ask yourself: how many people reading HN today do you think have volunteered in a hospital in the last year?
The world can be a harsh place, and we should consider whether we are resisting improvement under the given ground truth for the sake of the ideal.
Even their parents struggled with the nature of their injury. We visited daily over 3 months until he passed away and were able to redirect a local charity to support those kids.
The world can be cruel, a little kindness goes a long way.
There is a volunteer organization called Radio Lollipop that operates at certain children’s hospitals. They run a radio program for the kid and visit their rooms bringing arts & craft supplies (or sometimes just to chat). If you live near a participating hospital I highly recommend you join as a volunteer. I had an amazing time doing it.
However many of them had to be paused during COVID. A robot like this could help volunteers or paid staff visit kids safely until they can return. It is also great to help them reach rooms or wards they normally couldn’t
Being stuck in a hospital bed for a week or more sucks. Can't really focus on a book or reflex video game. There's only so much TV that's entertaining. Family is freaked out so you can't have real conversations.
Seriously, this is sad, and feels so cold. As others have mentioned we have service dogs in hospitals to visit kids. And also as others have mentioned, the hospital that piloted this is funded partially by the toy company Mattel, so I question the bias in this study.
Do you believe that this problem is already solved and not worth the researcher's time? If so, that reflects negatively only on you and I am glad others are striving to do even better.
Of course such studies should be reviewed and critiqued, but it is intellectually lazy to point only to the source of funding without further consideration.
Also a reply on hacker news is not the place for me to go into a complete peer review of this research. I am merely pointing out that they are promoting essentially a toy and the hospital is funded mainly by a toy company.
Also, no, I don't think that this research is necessarily a waste, but I would caution people from thinking this solves anything meaningful, and also would caution people from using this technology in lieu of real human interaction.
It is a novelty, a fun toy. My cynicism comes from seeing people trying to automate human interaction in seemingly every facet of life. My point is not everything has a technical solution, and beyond a small research project I could see larger scale versions of this being detrimental to patients since it will be used in lieu of other non-technical solutions.
These researchers spent seven months interacting child patients, some of whom were likely terminally ill, in an effort to make one of the hardest experiences of their lives a little less difficult. They would spend an hour interacting with and playing with the children via the robot. 90% of parents found the experience positive enough to request another visit.
There is plenty of room for valid critique here. Perhaps the kids would have preferred an Xbox. Perhaps the novelty will wear off quickly.
There is less room for critiques like "this feels sad and cold" or knee-jerk reactions about techies trying to solve everything with technology. If you had paused and asked yourself "Who even ran this study?" you would have noticed that the lead author is not even a techie but a doctor! Presumably they have some exposure to the problems these children face.
I was frustrated by your comment because you have allowed a misplaced cynical view to halt any curiosity you might have had about this study. Your cynicism allowed you to immediately dismiss it.
My comment was deliberately harsh. I think you should re-read your comment and imagine how Dr. Gabriel Oland or other members of the team might perceive it.
I stand by my original comment though. I really don't think the team should take my feedback as a personal insult, it is simply my own personal view on it, not a formal critique.
I read the research because I was genuinely curious, and I still think it feels like it falls in line with the old adage "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail". The fact that the lead researcher was a doctor doesn't change that for me.
I dislike a lot of projects like this because I have had experiences in my industry where people want to optimize and automate everything. Perhaps this will work, but in my experience things like this fall flat; I am always opened to being surprised though, and I certainly will not be upset if this does end up helping people and my read on it was wrong.
An elderly neighbor of mine recently got a "robot pet cat". After her husband had to go to a nursing home, leaving her living alone. It was a gift from another elderly lady, similarly living alone. My neighbor knows darn well that it's a cheap toy (very limited behaviors, obvious gear noises, etc.). But she still finds it quite comforting to hold and "play with", when the stress (bills, uncertainty, dealing with endless doctors and social workers, etc.) is getting to her.
Oh, I know: because that's a volunteer effort where both parties benefit, and it costs nothing. And no toy companies are involved.
According to [1], 63.4 million or 53% of American households own dogs.
And why do you think it's a study within "intervention type = mechanical" ?
The studies I looked at subsume "tablet" within "computer, smartphone, or tablet" so I'm not sure what we're comparing here.
In general I wish we wouldn’t make our environments at work and also hospitals not as sterile and purely functional as they are. I know some people like it that way but from my experience having a few animals like dogs around makes a huge difference for peoples emotional well being.
I wish that to no child.
Even less if we spend time manufacturing those little spawns of the devil, instead of spending time with those who are in need.
How does it benchmark to a caring human?
The real question is how the hypothetical caring human fares against infrequent visits from a compassion-fatigued and sleep-deprived resident nurse, or a genuinely caring parent who's stressed and similarly sleep deprived from working long hours to stave off bankruptcy and homelessness due to their child's medical expenses. Can they work together?
Also, I feel strongly like I recognize that "robot" and that exactly this same thing was done in the 70s, down to emoticons on a monitor for a face.
Kids delight in plastic objects just because they are shaped like dinosaurs instead of sippy cups. That novelty is important to them. The robot is operated by a human, so the interaction is still rich.
My nephews like me. My nephews would also like me-as-a-robot even more as an occasional thing, whether they knew it was me driving it or not. Given that the intention here is “more visits to sick kids that would not otherwise happen,” and not “substituting existing human interaction with a human-operated robot,” I think it’s a good thing.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
The “visited by preference list” probably looks like this:
Costumed Human > Robot > Tablet > Nothing
Anything short of full immersion with actual human-to-human interaction is doomed to be a lesser than alternative.
Make no mistake that if we are to blame anyone with this technology we should be blaming medical administration.
- Those billions are busy doing other things. There is a time problem.
- Even families don't care enough to visit their kids and elderly parents, so there isn't a lot of willingness to take significant action. There is a what people are willing to pay (in terms of time, money, and/or resources) problem.
- The scale of the problem is enormous and humans don't scale. Are there even enough sociable people you could hire in the USA for this?
Stuff like this does not replace human interaction, in both meanings.
1) No one "stops" visiting ill children because this robot exist, right? I know someone who is a "clinic clown", who keeps children a little bit happier by clowning around with a red round nose and funny make-up. Stuff like this will not "stop" because there is now a "better alternative".
2) This is in the same way a "solution" like a improvised splint is a solution to a broken leg. Not perfect in any way, not something forever, but it's better than nothing.
And "nothing" is the alternative for many people.
I worked in an elderly home after high school. Many of those people never had any visitors in a whole year, and the facility was severly understaffed, preventing us from "replacing" their families a bit. While I'm hoping that most childs in hospital get more visitors, I'm sure many are very lonely too.
I too would wish for it to be different. But we can't force people to interact with other people, can we?
If robots can emulate human emotions and affection close enough to at least ease the pain for those people, it's better than nothing, no? :-)