The effects of assistive walking robots for health care support on older persons: a preliminary field experiment in an elder care facility

In the present research, we prepared a human-size humanoid that autonomously navigates alongside with a walking person. Its utterances were controlled by Wizard-of-Oz method. A field experiment in which older persons walked in an elder care facility together with the robot while it talked to them was conducted to investigate the effects of robot accompaniment on older people requiring health care support in terms of increasing their motivation to engage in physical exercise. The participants (N = 23) were residents in the facility or persons with health problems who had been receiving day care at the facility. The experimental results suggested that (1) the participants enjoyed walking with the robot more than walking alone, (2) the physical burden did not differ between walking styles, and (3) walking with the robot evoked the participants’ perception of novelty or stimulated an existing interest in assistive robotics, both leading to positive feelings.