How Emotional Dances with Social Robots Influence Group HRI for Older Adults

Group-based dance therapy can provide physical health, social and cognitive benefits for older adults, as well as promote mental health. In this article, we present a novel Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) study that explores how robot-facilitated group-based dance therapy sessions influence the affect, engagement, and enjoyment of a group of older adults interacting with a socially assistive robot. Furthermore, we investigate how robot embodiment size impacts group experiences during HRI. A human-size robot and a toy-size robot both facilitated group-based therapy sessions with older adults at a long-term care home over a 2-month period. Extensive results showed that robot dance therapy can effectively increase group valence and engagement through repeated interaction sessions, while maintaining high levels of group enjoyment. There were no statistically significant differences found in group affect, engagement, and enjoyment among these two different robot embodiment sizes.