COGNITIVE ROBOTIC TRAINER

With the aging of the population worldwide, hu-manoid robots are being used with an older population,e.g., stroke patients and people with dementia. There is agrowing body of knowledge on how people interact withrobots, but limited information on the difference betweenyoung and old adults in their preferences when interactingwith humanoid robots and what factors influence thesepreferences. We developed a gamified robotic platform of acognitive-motor task. We conducted two experiments withthe following aims: to test how age, location of touch in-teraction (touching the robot’s tablet or hand), and em-bodied presence of a humanoid robot affect the motiva-tion of different age-group users to continue performinga cognitive-motor task. A total of 60 participants (30 oldadults and 30 young adults) took part in two experimentswith the humanoid Pepper robot (Softbank robotics). Bothold and young adults reported they enjoyed the interac-tion with the robot as they found it engaging and fun, andpreferred the embodied robot over the non-embodied com-puter screen. This study highlights that in order for the ex-perience of the user to be positive a personalization of theinteraction according to the age, the needs of the user, thecharacteristics, and the pace of the task is needed.