Using Socially Assistive Human–Robot Interaction to Motivate Physical Exercise for Older Adults
Abstract
In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and user study evaluation of a socially assistive robot (SAR) 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 the motivation theory 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 nonrelational robot coach. The second study evaluated participant preferences regarding user choice in the task scenario. Both studies served to evaluate the feasibility and overall effectiveness of the robot exercise system. The results of both studies are presented; they show a strong user preference for the relational over the nonrelational robot in terms of enjoyableness, companionship, and as an exercise coach, varying user preferences regarding choice, and high user ratings of the system across multiple metrics. The outcomes of the presented user studies, brought together, support the motivational capabilities of the robot, and demonstrate the viability and usefulness of the system in motivating exercise in elderly users.
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Sense of companionship can be obtained through interacting with a virtual pet or a socially assistive robot.
“Sense of companionship can be obtained through interacting with a virtual pet (Chesney & Lawson, 2007) or a socially assistive robot (Fasola & Mataric, 2012).”
From Catch Them All: Exploring the Psychological Impact of Playing Pokémon Go (2020) · cites this paper as Fasola & Mataric, 2012
Interacting with a socially assistive robot could enhance sense of companionship.
“Previous literature suggests interacting with a socially assistive robot could enhance sense of companionship (Birnbaum, Mizrahi, Hoffman, Reis, Finkel, & Sass, 2016;Fasola & Mataric, 2012).”
From Catch Them All: Exploring the Psychological Impact of Playing Pokémon Go (2020) · cites this paper as Fasola & Mataric, 2012
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Establishing and maintaining long-term human-computer relationships
Bickmore, T. W., & Picard, R. W. (2005) · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · doi:10.1145/1067860.1067867 · Cited by 1,333 · cited 3× · see citing works
“Adding the user’s name to the interaction dialog was an important part of our system design, not only to add variability, but also for its relationship building effect [33].”
BackgroundInfluentialSocial Support and the Outcome of Major Depression
George, L. K., Blazer, D. G., Hughes, D. C., & Fowler, N. (1989) · British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.154.4.478 · Cited by 732 · see citing works
Vallerand, R. J., & Reid, G. (1984) · Journal of Sport Psychology · doi:10.1123/jsp.6.1.94 · Cited by 527 · cited 1× · see citing works
“There are two forms of motivation: intrinsic motivation, which comes from within a person, and extrinsic motivation, which comes from sources external to a person.”
BackgroundRobots at home: Understanding long-term human-robot interaction
Kidd, C. D., & Breazeal, C. (2008) · 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems · doi:10.1109/iros.2008.4651113 · Cited by 332 · see citing works
Vallerand, R. J. (1983) · Journal of Sport Psychology · doi:10.1123/jsp.5.1.100 · Cited by 88 · see citing works
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Incorporating Conversational Strategies in a Social Robot to Interact with People with Dementia
Cruz-Sandoval, D., & Favela, J. (2019) · Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders · doi:10.1159/000497801 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
Ludic-HRI: Designing Playful Experiences with Robots
Lee, W.-Y., & Jung, M. (2020) · Companion of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction · doi:10.1145/3371382.3377429 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Kian, M., Zong, M., Fischer, K., Singh, A., Velentza, A.-M., O'Connell, A., Ignatova, L., Sang, P., Upadhyay, S., Gupta, A., et al. (2024) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2402.17937 · Cited by 15
Self-citationMultimodal Conversational Agent for Older Adults' Behavioral Change
El Kamali, M., Angelini, L., Lalanne, D., Abou Khaled, O., & Mugellini, E. (2020) · Companion Publication of the 2020 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction · doi:10.1145/3395035.3425315 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Catch Them All: Exploring the Psychological Impact of Playing Pokémon Go
Wang, R., & Wu, M. (2020) · Journal of Communication Technology · doi:10.51548/joctec-2020-004 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Fasola, J., & Mataric, M. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Southern California (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the IEEE
- Published
- 2012-08
- Volume
- 100
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 2512-2526
- ISSN
- 0018-9219 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-2256
- OpenAlex
- W2065178260
- Cited by
- 349
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 25 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 30.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Proceedings of the IEEE (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Demography › Technology Use by Older Adults
- Keywords
- socially assistive robots, human-robot interaction, exercise motivation, older adults, intrinsic motivation, praise, user preferences, companionship, quality of life
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