Shakespeare and Robots: Participatory Performance Art for Older Adults

Theatre arts, social work, and engineering researchers investigated the therapeutic benefits of an interdisciplinary multi-modal intervention with older adults using a social robotic platform in an independent living facility. This pilot study incorporated Shakespearean text and the social robot, NAO, performing and concurrently encouraging the older adult to perform as a function of a participatory performance arts model. The findings of this human-robot study include a reduction in depression and an increase in social engagement with the robot in the older adults who participated in the intervention.

I. Introduction

Section II will briefly discuss the background of social and communicative robots. It will include references to participatory arts for human-human models as well as theatre methodologies as a component of engaging, affective behavior between social robots and human beings. Section III details the specific methodology used in the study including setting, platform, participants, and design. Section III further elucidates the emerging conceptual idea of Shakespeare as the textual tool for interaction and includes the scripts for the study. Section IV presents measurements and analysis. Section V represents results and discussion. Section VI includes study limitations. Section VII reports the final conclusions and Section VIII discusses next steps and future work.