Humanoid Robots May Help Enhance the Mental Health of Seniors

Researchers at the University of Bari and the University of Parma recently explored in a new study, the emotional reactions of a small group of older adults after they interacted with a human robotic system called Pepper.

As specified in a Tech Xplore report, robots are slowly being introduced to a wide range of "real-world settings" which include malls, manufacturing companies, and healthcare facilities.

One way in which robots could be specifically helpful is by assisting seniors in both the elderly care facilities and their homes.

Seniors Interacting with Robots

In their paper, the study investigators suggested that seniors can exhibit both positive and negative emotions while interacting with robots.

According to Berardina De Carolis, one of the researchers who performed the study said, they previously carried out other studies with the NAO robot "in the context of Cognitive Stimulation Therapy or CST, and they gauged not just the seniors' performance in terms of task completion, but in terms of engagement in and affective response, as well.

The researcher also explained that their results were promising. When Pepper arrived in their department, they noticed that some of the robot's features could overcome the NAO robot's limitations like the display, height, and the possibility to move in a room, among others, and produce better results.

In their past research, the study investigators had examined the effect of using NAO, a programmable humanoid robot platform, to carry out CTS on senior adults.

Meanwhile, CTS is a form of treatment aimed at enhancing the mental skill of older adults or younger patients suffering from memory and cognitive impairments.

Assisting Therapists

In one of their studies, a similar News8Plus report said, the researchers looked specifically at how acceptant the patients were of the robots, not to mention how well they performed on tasks given to them.

Olimpia Pino, another researcher who's part of the study said, for example, they used NAO H25 in a healthcare facility for cognitive disorders and dementia, as a model for exhibiting not just physical exercises to a group of seniors but to therapy session groups as well, to assist the therapist with maintaining and, or, recovering cognitive abilities like memory, communication skills, and orientation, and providing instructions, suggestions, and consequences to the participants.

After receiving the Pepper robot in their lab, De Carolis, Pino, and their team decided to perform a new investigation in the Alzheimer's center in Bari, adapting the tasks they employed in their past work to leverage the new more advanced communication abilities of the robot.

Interacting with Pepper

In their new research published the Human-Friendly Robotics journal, De Carolis and their team examined the emotions of eight seniors while they completed memory tasks with support from the Pepper robot.

To do this, they compared the projections made by an automatic FER or Facial Expression Recognition system specifically trained to detect emotions in the older adults' faces with observations three human raters made.

As a result, the Pepper robot proved to be specifically well-suited for its activities, as it features "tactile sensors" on its hands and heads, as well as a tablet in which it can display images or play videos, and buttons that users can push to interact with the robot.

The research team found that participants showed both positive and negative emotions while interacting with the robots while performing memory tasks.

Interestingly, human raters observed more positive emotions compared to the automatic emotion recognitions did. Nevertheless, most of the emotional reactions of seniors appeared to be positive.

Related information about the NAO robot is shown on Slimeduchess's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Robots in Science Times.