Quantitative analysis of utterance of elderly people in long-term robot assisted activity

A long-term experiment of robot assisted activity for elderly people has been conducted at a health service facility for the aged since Aug. 2003. Three therapeutic seal robots, Paro, were introduced there. This paper describes the results of the experiment for one year. Face scales that consist of illustrations of person's faces were used to evaluate a person's moods. In addition, the interaction between elderly people and seal robots was analyzed. As a result, their moods were improved by interaction with the seal robots, and frequency of the utterances of elderly people was increased.