Quantitative analysis of utterance of elderly people in long-term robot assisted activity

A long-term experiment of robot assisted activity for elderly people has been conducted at a health service facility for the aged since Aug. 2003. Three therapeutic seal robots, Paro, were introduced there. This paper describes the results of the experiment for one year. Face scales that consist of illustrations of person's faces were used to evaluate a person's moods. In addition, the interaction between elderly people and seal robots was analyzed. As a result, their moods were improved by interaction with the seal robots, and frequency of the utterances of elderly people was increased.

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

[2]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Influence of a priori knowledge in subjective interpretation and evaluation by short-term interaction with mental commit robot , 2000, Proceedings. 2000 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2000) (Cat. No.00CH37113).

[3]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Emergence of emotional behavior through physical interaction between human and robot , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.99CH36288C).

[4]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Emotional robot for intelligent system-artificial emotional creature project , 1996, Proceedings 5th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Communication. RO-MAN'96 TSUKUBA.

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

[6]  Stanley Coren,et al.  Why We Love the Dogs We Do: How to Find the Dog That Matches Your Personality , 1998 .

[7]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Artificial emotional creature for human-machine interaction , 1997, 1997 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Computational Cybernetics and Simulation.

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

[9]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Psychological, physiological and social effects to elderly people by robot assisted activity at a health service facility for the aged , 2002, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM 2003).

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

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

[12]  Kazuo Tanie,et al.  Tabulation and analysis of questionnaire results of subjective evaluation of seal robot in UK , 2002, IEEE 2002 28th Annual Conference of the Industrial Electronics Society. IECON 02.

[13]  M. Baun,et al.  Physiological Effects of Human/Companion Animal Bonding , 1984, Nursing research.

[14]  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).

[15]  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).

[16]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  Applying Mobile Robot Technology to the Rehabilitation of Autistic Children , 1999 .

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

[18]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Tabulation and analysis of questionnaire results of subjective evaluation of seal robot in Japan, U.K., Sweden and Italy , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[19]  T. Saito.  Examination of Change of Stress Reaction by Urinary Tests of Elderly before and after Introduction of Mental Commit Robot to an Elderly Institution , 2002 .

[20]  T. Shibata,et al.  Ubiquitous surface tactile sensor , 2004, IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. TExCRA Technical Exhibition Based..

[21]  J. Gammonley,et al.  Pet projects: animal assisted therapy in nursing homes. , 1991, Journal of gerontological nursing.