Humanoid robots which support humans during various tasks or simply provide entertainment are becoming more and more prevalent in everyday use. Due to demographic change this development is especially notable in the area of care. When everyday users with different interests, abilities and backgrounds come into contact with robots, diversifying factors in human-technology-interaction become effective as well.

This sub-project is to examine, on the one hand, how diversifying factors of the end users influence human-robot interaction, with senior citizens being considered as the target group. On the other hand, it is to explore possibilities for the specific application of these diversifying factors for improving human-robot interaction.

We follow a user Centered Design Process in order to meet the needs and requirements of the senior citizens. For this purpose, we will begin by developing use cases for domestic robots for elderly people and evaluating these by interviewing senior citizens.

The insights gained through those interviews will be directly incorporated in the implementation of social robots whose behavior resembles human communication patterns in order to enable natural interaction with the users. Afterwards, these prototypes will be tested with the target group in order to validate their ease of handling and suitability for daily use. In this context, the diversifying factor of gender will be the main focus of attention.

The goal of this project is to gain new insights into the diversifying factors involved in human-robot interaction and to contribute to a more gender-sensitive interaction with technology in general.