Assessing the quality and quantity of social interaction in a socially assistive robot-guided therapeutic setting

Abstract

We present an application of a socially assistive robotics (SAR) system in a therapeutic setting. We examine the amount of interaction elicited by the robot in a therapeutic setting with individuals post-stroke. We examine the role of various communication modalities, and their affects on the participants' responses. Seven participants of mild to moderate functional impairment due to stroke interacted with our SAR system during three sessions of motor task practice. The robot guided the users as they performed a wire puzzle task, while providing them with feedback about their performance. We evaluated the amount of verbalization and eye contact made with the robot. Our results indicate that users make eye contact more often than they verbalize when interacting with the robot. Further, user interactions are most frequent at the beginning of a practice session, and occur less frequently as the session progresses. When a user observes that the robot is not responding to a certain type of communication, the user limits the use of that communication modality. These insights should be useful in the design of future robot-based therapeutic interventions.