Preferences of Healthcare Staff in the Way of Interacting with Robots Depending on Their Prior Knowledge of ICTs: Findings from Iward Project

Research about applicability of robots in the healthcare sector is constantly increasing. IWARD is a EU 6th framework project to directly support staff in hospitals by a self-organizing swarm system that will provide an efficient way to order specific tasks without worrying about the details of their execution. The IWARD swarm will be able to perform delivery, guidance, cleaning, monitoring and surveillance tasks. In order to develop a swarm that works for hospital staff, User Centered Design (UCD) was chosen, as this approach provides the developers with a better way to identify with end users when trying to develop a design for them. Keeping this perspective in mind, the following paper describes the process and methods of gathering information about heath care staff attitudes and expertise towards technology and robots, and how these features may facilitate or interfere with the subsequent inclusion of IWARD technology in hospital environments.