Fan Jing, Ullal Akshith, Beuscher Linda, Mion Lorraine C, Newhouse Paul, Sarkar Nilanjan
Department of EECS, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN USA.
School of Nursing, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN USA.
Int J Soc Robot. 2021;13(7):1711-1727. doi: 10.1007/s12369-021-00760-2. Epub 2021 Feb 21.
Older adults residing in long term care (LTC) settings commonly experience apathy, a neuropsychiatric condition with adverse consequences of increased morbidity and mortality. Activities that combine social, physical and cognitive stimuli are most effective in engaging older adults with apathy but are time consuming and require significant staff resources. We present the results from an initial pilot field study of our socially assistive robotic (SAR) system, Ro-Tri, capable of multi-modal interventions to foster social interaction between pairs of older adults. Seven paired participants attended two sessions a week for three weeks. Sessions consisted of robot-mediated triadic interactions with three types of activities repeated once over the 3 weeks. Ro-Tri gathered quantitative interaction data, head pose, vocal sound, and physiological signals to automatically evaluate older adults' activity and social engagement. Ro-Tri functioned smoothly without any technical issues. Older adults had > 90% attendance and 100% completion rate and remained engaged with the system throughout the study duration. Participants' visual attention toward the SAR system and their partners increased 7.2% and 4.7%, respectively, with their interaction effort showing an increase of 2.9%. Older adults and LTC staff had positive perceptions with the system. These initial results demonstrate Ro-Tri's ability to engage older adults, encourage social human-to-human interaction, and assess the changes using quantitative metrics. Future studies will determine SAR's impact on apathy in LTC older adults.
居住在长期护理（LTC）机构中的老年人普遍存在冷漠情绪，这是一种神经精神疾病，会增加发病率和死亡率等不良后果。结合社交、身体和认知刺激的活动在吸引冷漠的老年人参与方面最为有效，但耗时且需要大量工作人员资源。我们展示了对我们的社交辅助机器人（SAR）系统Ro-Tri进行的初步试点实地研究结果，该系统能够进行多模式干预，以促进老年人之间的社交互动。七对参与者每周参加两次课程，共持续三周。课程包括机器人介导的三人互动，其中三种活动在三周内重复一次。Ro-Tri收集定量互动数据、头部姿势、声音和生理信号，以自动评估老年人的活动和社交参与度。Ro-Tri运行顺畅，没有任何技术问题。老年人的出勤率>90%，完成率为100%，并且在整个研究期间都与该系统保持互动。参与者对SAR系统及其伙伴的视觉注意力分别增加了7.2%和4.7%，他们的互动努力增加了2.9%。老年人和LTC工作人员对该系统有积极的看法。这些初步结果证明了Ro-Tri吸引老年人、鼓励人际社交互动以及使用定量指标评估变化的能力。未来的研究将确定SAR对LTC老年人冷漠情绪的影响。
