Train with Me: A Study Comparing a Socially Assistive Robot and a Virtual Agent for a Rehabilitation Task

Vasco, Valentina; Willemse, Cesco; Chevalier, Pauline; Tommaso, Davide De; Gower, Valerio; Gramatica, Furio; Tikhanoff, Vadim; Pattacini, Ugo; Metta, Giorgio; Wykowska, Agnieszka

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-35888-4_42

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) is a domain of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) which focuses on developing robots capable of assisting users through social interaction (Feil-Seifer and Matarić, 2005 ; Matarić and Scassellati, 2016 ). Unlike virtual agents, socially assistive robots present a physical embodiment, which improves likeability (Fasola and Matarić, 2013 ; Li, 2015 ), user engagement and motivation (Vasco et al, 2019 ), adherence (Bickmore and Picard, 2005 ; Kidd and Breazeal, 2007 ) and task performance (Vasco et al, 2019 ), which are essential in long-term healthcare programmes.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Socially Assistive Robot for Long-Term Cardiac Rehabilitation in the Real World

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What are the benefits of using a socially assistive robot for long-term cardiac rehabilitation? To answer this question we designed and conducted a real-world long-term study, in collaboration with medical specialists, at the Fundación Cardioinfantil-Instituto de Cardiología clinic (Bogotá, Colombia) lasting 2.5 years. The study took place within the context of the outpatient phase of patients' cardiac rehabilitation programme and aimed to compare the patients' progress and adherence in the conventional cardiac rehabilitation programme (control condition) against rehabilitation supported by a fully autonomous socially assistive robot which continuously monitored the patients during exercise to provide immediate feedback and motivation based on sensory measures (robot condition). The explicit aim of the social robot is to improve patient motivation and increase adherence to the programme to ensure a complete recovery. We recruited 15 patients per condition. The cardiac rehabilitation programme was designed to last 36 sessions (18 weeks) per patient. The findings suggest that robot increases adherence (by 13.3%) and leads to faster completion of the programme. In addition, the patients assisted by the robot had more rapid improvement in their recovery heart rate, better physical activity performance and a higher improvement in cardiovascular functioning, which indicate a successful cardiac rehabilitation programme performance. Moreover, the medical staff and the patients acknowledged that the robot improved the patient motivation and adherence to the programme, supporting its potential in addressing the major challenges in rehabilitation programmes.

show abstract

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Socially Assistive Robot for Long-Term Cardiac Rehabilitation in the Real World

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Robot coaches have been used to encourage children exercising [10] and have been proved to be effective in terms of companionship and social interaction [10]. Previous research revealed that robot coaches are as effective as a human coach [11] and preferable to a virtual coach [12][13][14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This tuned the ongoing development of robotic coaches towards the direction of humanoid robots or robots with some semblance of human-likeness [12]. Such developments involving humanoid robot coaches [12,13] engaged the users in upper limb training sessions. The robots (Bandit and R1) were larger in dimension, closer to human-size and mounted on a wheeled base.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robotic System for Physical Training of Older Adults

Avioz-Sarig

Olatunji

Sarne-Fleischmann

et al. 2020

Int J of Soc Robotics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Physical exercise has many physical, psychological and social health benefits leading to improved life quality. This paper presents a robotic system developed as a personal coach for older adults aiming to motivate older adults to participate in physical activities. The robot instructs the participants, demonstrates the exercises and provides real-time corrective and positive feedback according to the participant’s performance as monitored by an RGB-D camera. Two robotic systems based on two different humanoid robots (Nao, toy-like and Poppy, mechanical-like) were developed and implemented using the Python programming language. Experimental studies with 32 older adults were conducted, to determine the preferable mode and timing of the feedback provided to the user to accommodate user preferences, motivate the users and improve their interaction with the system. Additionally, user preferences with regards to the two different humanoid robots used were explored. The results revealed that the system motivated the older adults to engage more in physical exercises. The type and timing of feedback influenced this engagement. Most of these older adults also perceived the system as very useful, easy to use, had a positive attitude towards the system and noted their intention to use it. Most users preferred the more mechanical looking robot (Poppy) over the toy-like robot (Nao).

show abstract

“…Indeed, several studies showed that embodiment plays a crucial role when investigating social cognition mechanisms (e.g. Vasco et al, 2019;Wiese, Metta, Wykowska, 2017), especially in the context of mutual gaze, with higher arousal and faster responses associated with real-time mutual gaze compared to direct gaze presented on a screen (Hietanen et al, 2008;Pönkänen et al, 2011).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robot’s social gaze affects conflict resolution but not conflict adaptations

Ciardo¹,

Wykowska²

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Robots are a new category of social agents that, thanks to their embodiment, can be used to train and support cognitive skills such as cognitive control. Several studies showed that cognitive control mechanisms are sensitive to affective states induced by humor, mood, and symbolic feedback such as monetary rewards. In the present study, we investigated whether the social gaze of a humanoid robot can affect cognitive control mechanisms. To this end, in two experiments, we evaluated both the conflict resolution and trial-by-trial adaptations during an auditory Simon task, as a function of the type of feedback participants received in the previous trial from the iCub robot, namely, mutual or avoiding gaze behaviour. Across three experiments, we compared the effect of mutual, avoiding (Exp1 and Exp2), and neutral (Exp3) gaze feedback between screen-based (Exp1) and physically embodied setups (Exp2 and Exp3). Results showed that iCub’s social gaze feedback modulated conflict resolution, but not conflict adaptations. Specifically, the Simon effect was increased following mutual gaze feedback from iCub. Moreover, the modulatory effect was observed for the embodied setup in which the robot could engage or avoid eye contact in real-time (Exp2) but not for the screen-based setting (Exp1). Our findings showed for the first time that social feedback in Human-Robot Interaction, such as social gaze, can be used to modulate cognitive control. The results highlight the advantage of using robots to evaluate and train complex cognitive skills in both healthy and clinical populations.

show abstract

Train with Me: A Study Comparing a Socially Assistive Robot and a Virtual Agent for a Rehabilitation Task

Cited by 18 publications

References 17 publications

A Socially Assistive Robot for Long-Term Cardiac Rehabilitation in the Real World

A Socially Assistive Robot for Long-Term Cardiac Rehabilitation in the Real World

Robotic System for Physical Training of Older Adults

Robot’s social gaze affects conflict resolution but not conflict adaptations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About