Developing Adaptive, Personalised, Autonomous Social Robots Using Physiological Signals: System Development and a Pilot Study

Maintaining physical, emotional and psychological health is vital for well-being. Social robots have been increasingly used in healthcare to support physical and mental health. Providing appropriate, adaptive and personalised feedback based on the user’s internal states is crucial for effective and engaging human-robot interaction, especially in one-to-one interaction scenarios. In this research, we developed an adaptive and autonomous system, integrating a social robot, a wearable non-intrusive Polar chest sensor and algorithms to guide people in three application scenarios to promote physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. The social robot senses users’ psychophysiological measures such as heart rate and heart-rate variability via the wearable sensor, monitors their stress responses, provides real-time feedback and guides them to perform activities. We detail the system development and a pilot study with fifteen participants to evaluate the system in the three scenarios. The findings suggest that the autonomous system could effectively guide participants through the activities by regulating their stress responses. Participants’ physiological data also support these results. Moreover, the system was well-accepted by its users.