Results of a Pilot Study with a Robot Instructor for Group Exercise at a Senior Living Community

We discuss the motivation, design, implementation, and pilot study of an agent-based exercise robot for five senior residents and five staff members in a senior living community. Our goals of the study were to evaluate the performance of the resident group and the attitudes, acceptance, and opinions of both groups. The pilot study was performed on-site where senior participants were selected a priori by the staff. We use soft systems methodology as a guide to refine the requirements and to evolve the exercise protocol and robot behaviors over multiple exercise sessions. Based on a 30-min session with both groups combined, followed by focus sessions with each group individually, our findings suggest that senior residents moderately accept the robot as a group exercise leader and staff members are cautiously enthusiastic about the idea.