Designing Social Robots that Engage Older Adults in Exercise: A Case Study
Abstract: We present and evaluate a prototype social robot to encourage daily exercise among older adults in a home setting. Our prototype system, designed to lead users through exercise sessions with motivational feedback, was assessed through a case study with a 78-year-old participant for one week. Our case study highlighted preferences for greater user control over exercise choices and questioned the necessity of precise motion tracking. Feedback also indicated a desire for more varied exercises and suggested improvements in user engagement techniques. The insights suggest that further research is needed to enhance system adaptability and effectiveness to better promote daily exercise. Future efforts will aim to refine the prototype based on participant feedback and extend the evaluation to broader in-home deployments.
- Physical activity preferences among older adults: A systematic review. Journal of aging and physical activity 27, 1 (2019), 128–139.
- Co-Designing with Older Adults, for Older Adults: Robots to Promote Physical Activity. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. 506–515.
- Effectiveness of a group exercise program in a long-term care facility: a randomized pilot trial. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association 4, 2 (2003), 74–80.
- Paul Baxter and Tony Belpaeme. 2014. Pervasive memory: The future of long-term social hri lies in the past. In Third international symposium on new frontiers in human-robot interaction at AISB.
- The mental health benefits of physical activity in older adults survive the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 28, 10 (2020), 1046–1057.
- Doreen Dawe and Robin Moore-Orr. 1995. Low-intensity, range-of-motion exercise: invaluable nursing care for elderly patients. Journal of Advanced Nursing 21, 4 (1995), 675–681.
- Juan Fasola and Maja J Matarić. 2013. A socially assistive robot exercise coach for the elderly. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction 2, 2 (2013), 3–32.
- Socially assistive robotics: Robot exercise trainer for older adults. Technologies 6, 1 (2018), 32.
- USÂ Department of Health and Human Services. 2008. Physical activity guidelines for Americans: be active, healthy, and happy! (2008). http://www.health.gov/paguidelines/guidelines/default.aspx
- Physical activity and health: A report of the Surgeon General Atlanta. GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1996).
- Recommendations for physical activity in older adults. Bmj 350 (2015).
- The impact of regular exercise on life satisfaction, self-esteem, and self-efficacy in older adults. Behavioral Sciences 13, 9 (2023), 714.
Paper Prompts
Sign up for free to create and run prompts on this paper using GPT-5.
Top Community Prompts
Collections
Sign up for free to add this paper to one or more collections.