Meal-Time with a Socially Assistive Robot and Older Adults at a Long-term Care Facility

Abstract

As people get older, their ability to perform basic self-maintenance activities can be diminished due to the prevalence of cognitive and physical impairments or as a result of social isolation. The objective of our work is to design socially assistive robots capable of providing cognitive assistance, targeted engagement, and motivation to elderly individuals, in order to promote participation in self-maintenance activities of daily living. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the expressive human-like robot, Brian 2.1, as a social motivator for the important activity of eating meals. An exploratory study was conducted at an elderly care facility with the robot and eight individuals, aged 82--93, to investigate user engagement and compliance during meal-time interactions with the robot along with overall acceptance and attitudes towards the robot. Results of the study show that the individuals were both engaged in the interactions and complied with the robot during two different meal-eating scenarios. A post-study robot acceptance questionnaire also determined that, in general, the participants enjoyed interacting with Brian 2.1 and had positive attitudes towards the robot for the intended activity.