Poor sleep health is an increasingly concerning public healthcare crisis, especially when coupled with a dwindling number of health professionals qualified to combat it. However, there is a growing body of scientific literature on the use of digital technologies in supporting and sustaining individuals' healthy sleep habits. Social robots are a relatively recent technology that has been used to facilitate health care interventions and may have potential in improving sleep health outcomes, as well. Social robots' unique characteristics -- such as anthropomorphic physical embodiment or effective communication methods -- help to engage users and motivate them to comply with specific interventions, thus improving the interventions' outcomes. This scoping review aims to evaluate current scientific evidence for employing social robots in sleep health interventions, identify critical research gaps, and suggest future directions for developing and using social robots to improve people's sleep health. Our analysis of the reviewed studies found them limited due to a singular focus on the older adult population, use of small sample sizes, limited intervention durations, and other compounding factors. Nevertheless, the reviewed studies reported several positive outcomes, highlighting the potential social robots hold in this field. Although our review found limited clinical evidence for the efficacy of social robots as purveyors of sleep health interventions, it did elucidate the potential for a successful future in this domain if current limitations are addressed and more research is conducted.

翻译：睡眠健康狀況不佳是一項日益令人擔憂的公共醫療危機，尤其是在能處理此問題的合格醫療專業人員數量日漸減少的情況下。然而，越來越多的科學文獻探討了運用數位科技來支援及維持個人健康睡眠習慣的可能性。社交機器人是一項相對新穎的科技，已用於促進醫療保健介入措施，並且可能在改善睡眠健康成果方面也具有潛力。社交機器人的獨特特性——例如擬人化的物理實體或有效的溝通方式——有助於吸引使用者，並激勵他們遵循特定介入措施，從而提升介入成效。本項範疇綜述旨在評估目前關於在睡眠健康介入措施中運用社交機器人的科學證據，找出關鍵的研究缺口，並為開發及使用社交機器人來改善人們睡眠健康的未來方向提出建議。我們對所回顧研究的分析發現，這些研究因僅聚焦於老年族群、使用小樣本數、介入期間有限，以及其他複合因素而有所限制。儘管如此，這些研究報告了若干正向成果，凸顯了社交機器人在此領域的潛力。雖然我們的回顧發現，關於社交機器人作為睡眠健康介入措施載具的療效，臨床證據有限，但它確實闡明了，若能解決當前的限制並進行更多研究，此領域未來將具有成功的潛力。