Designing an In-Home Body Double Robot to Support College Students with ADHD

In-home socially assistive robots (SARs) can provide daily assistance to support neurodivergent young adults, enabling increased independence and autonomy. My research investigates how robots can facilitate body doubling, a common practice among individuals with ADHD that involves having another person present to make it easier to start and complete tasks. This doctoral work leverages a modular, low-cost robot platform to design and validate an in-home body double robot. We first conducted a three-week in-home user study to validate that college students with ADHD find robot body doubles useful and to gather initial feedback on the robot’s design and functionality. We then conducted a follow-up study in an on-campus learning center to understand how users sought to personalize the robot’s behavior during body doubling schoolwork sessions. This work represents an initial step towards personalized SAR study companions to support executive functioning among students with ADHD.