Robot assisted activity at a health service facility for the aged for ten weeks: An interim report of a long-term experiment

Abstract A long-term experiment using robot-assisted activity has been conducted at a health service facility for the aged since August 2003. Two therapeutic seal robots, named Paro, were introduced at the facility. This paper provides an interim report for 10 experimental weeks. Face scales, consisting of illustrations similar to people's faces, were used to evaluate participants' moods. The results indicate that the feelings and moods of the elderly improved by interacting with the seal robots. Moreover, the robots encouraged them to communicate with each other and with the caregivers.

[1]  J. Pratt.  Remarks on Zeros and Ties in the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Procedures , 1959 .

[2]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Effects of robot-assisted activity for elderly people and nurses at a day service center , 2004, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[3]  Eiichi Ohkubo,et al.  Studies on necessary condition of companion robot in the RAA application , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation. Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation for the New Millennium (Cat. No.03EX694).

[4]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  An overview of human interactive robots for psychological enrichment , 2004, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[5]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Mental commit robot and its application to therapy of children , 2001, 2001 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics. Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8556).

[6]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Subjective Evaluation of Seal Robot: Paro -Tabulation and Analysis of Questionnaire Results , 2002, J. Robotics Mechatronics.

[7]  Alexander Libin,et al.  Person-robot interactions from the robopsychologists' point of view: the robotic psychology and robotherapy approach , 2004, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[8]  C. Lorish,et al.  The Face Scale: a brief, nonverbal method for assessing patient mood. , 1986, Arthritis and rheumatism.

[9]  Masahiro Fujita,et al.  On activating human communications with pet-type robot AIBO , 2004, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[10]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Subjective interpretation of emotional behavior through physical interaction between human and robot , 1999, IEEE SMC'99 Conference Proceedings. 1999 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Cat. No.99CH37028).

[11]  Bast Loudon,et al.  Children , 1892, The Hospital.