Socially Assistive Robot Exercise Coach: Motivating Older Adults to Engage in Physical Exercise

Abstract

We present the design, implementation, and user study evaluation of a socially assistive robot system designed to engage elderly users in physical exercise aimed at achieving health benefits and improving quality of life. We discuss our design methodology, which incorporates insights from psychology research in the area of intrinsic motivation, and focuses on maintaining engagement through personalized social interaction. We describe two user studies conducted to test our design principles in practice with our system. The first study investigated the role of praise and relational discourse in the exercise system by comparing a relational robot coach to a non-relational robot coach. The second study compared physical vs. virtual embodiment in the task scenario. The two studies evaluate the feasibility and overall effectiveness of the robot exercise system.