Exercising with Baxter: preliminary support for assistive social-physical human-robot interaction.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The worldwide population of older adults will soon exceed the capacity of assisted living facilities. Accordingly, we aim to understand whether appropriately designed robots could help older adults stay active at home.

Methods

Building on related literature as well as guidance from experts in game design, rehabilitation, and physical and occupational therapy, we developed eight human-robot exercise games for the Baxter Research Robot, six of which involve physical human-robot contact. After extensive iteration, these games were tested in an exploratory user study including 20 younger adult and 20 older adult users.

Results

Only socially and physically interactive games fell in the highest ranges for pleasantness, enjoyment, engagement, cognitive challenge,

SUBMITTER: Fitter NT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7027056 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature