**1. Introduction**

Robots are part of many peoples' everyday life—even if only a few people are in direct contact and interaction, robots are part of production and logistic processes that affect almost all of us. However, the current increase in the development of mobile robots opens up new perspectives for human–robot-interaction processes and possibilities.

At the same time, however, those developments lead to concerns, reservations and questions of safety, ethics as well as the future of communication and society. Therefore, the sole technical development of robots is not enough. There is a high demand for interdisciplinary research in the field of social robotics that is becoming more and more relevant. Due to the sparse immediate contact between humans and robots, the research and development based on research findings is comparatively low. However, there are plenty of project calls and proposals in which robots are meant to perform certain auxiliary functions. However, many of these projects deal with acceptance issues that are due to an unfamiliar type of interaction between humans and robots. These issues partly originate from different types of robot locomotion, limitations in human-like behaviour as well as limited functionalities in general.

At the same time, animal-type robots—robotic quadrupeds such as Boston Dynamic's WildCat—and underactuated robots are on the rise and present social scientists with new challenges such as the concept of uncanny valley. However, they open up possibilities in many sectors such as in working environments of the industry as well as, e.g., health and geriatric care.

In Germany there are currently about 3.4 million people in need of care. The effects of demographic change affect the care sector in two ways: while the number of people in need of long-term care is constantly increasing, fewer and fewer newcomers to the profession are opting for long-term care; at the same time, older nursing professionals are leaving the profession early due to physical and psychological stress [1]. The majority of people in need of care (73%) are currently in outpatient care [2], 55% of whom are assigned to nursing levels 1 and 2 [3].

These developments require new innovative solutions which contribute to maintaining the independence, self-determination and quality of life of people in need of long-term care. Here, mobile robotic systems offer great potential to maintain and increase mobility as well as an independent participation in social life. However, existing mobile robotic systems show a limitation of mobility to ground-level and structured environments as well as a lack of involvement of user groups during the development process. However, this problem might be solved by a suitable mobile robot system that is developed and tested demand-oriented by including user-centered research approaches. In the following sections, a project at a research institution in Germany will be described. The project aims at developing a setting of human–robot-interaction and collaboration that engages the designated users in the whole process.
