Field Testing of Ro-Tri, a Robot-Mediated Triadic Interaction for Older Adults

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.