Design of positive biofeedback using a robot's behaviors as motion media

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a game system that uses biofeedback to provide an attractive entertaining game. In general, negative biofeedback is used for relaxing users; however, in our game system positive biofeedback is used for arousing them. We assumed that the latter biofeedback method could affect the users' emotional states effectively; that is why we call it positive biofeedback. We used skin conductance response (SCR) as a biofeedback signal in our game system because SCR can effectively reflect the mental agitation of users. Therefore, we developed a teddy bear robot to be the motion media for providing feeding back the measured SCR information to users. When the value user SCR increases during interaction with this robot, the robot starts moving its arms and head in relation to the transition of SCR values so that it appears to be agitated. We then conducted two experiments to measure the participants' SCR transitions. From the results of these experiments, we can state that the users' emotional attachment to the robot and the robot's behaviors in reaction to user biological signals are important cues that create positive biofeedback. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2006.