Exercising with a humanoid companion is more effective than exercising alone

Engineers developing socially assistive robots for promoting a healthy and active lifestyle are facing several mechanical and interactive design challenges. In this paper we are answering the question whether a humanoid exercising partner capable of working out together with its user makes significant improvement in the user's engagement. We conducted a study with 56 participants doing five isometric exercises in three conditions comparing the differences between working out alone (IC), with an robot instructor (RI) guiding the user, or with a robot companion (RC) exercising co-actively with the user. Our results show that the RC brings a motivational gain to exercise longer compared to all other conditions.