Robot Therapy in a Care House

Robot Therapy for elderly residents in a care house has been conducted from June, 2005. Two therapeutic seal robots were introduced, and activated for over 9 hours every day to interact with the residents. This paper presents a progress report of this experiment. In order to investigate psychological and social influences of the robots, each subject was interviewed, and their social network was analysed. In addition, activities of the residents in the public areas were recorded by video cameras during daytime (8:30-18:00) over two months. The results indicate that the density of the social networks was increased through interaction with the seal robots. Furthermore, their social interaction was increased through interaction with the seal robots. Index Terms – Mental Commit Robot, Robot Therapy, Human-Robot Interaction, Elderly Care, Social Network

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