In-person vs Remote HRI: A Comparative Study of Robot Facilitated Dance with Older Adults in Long-term Care

As the global older population increases, a number of older adults need assistance in their daily lives. Social robots can be used to provide support for a number of activities including facilitating dance sessions. Research in this field has mainly considered physically embodied robots collocated in the same environment with the users. However, the experience of older adults with different robot presence conditions has not yet been explored. Robot presence can play an important role in investigating social human-robot interactions (HRI) with this vulnerable population. In this paper, we present a novel preliminary HRI study that investigates and compares how older adults' interaction behaviors vary during dance sessions facilitated by social humanoid robots in both in-person HRI and remote HRI conditions. Our study was conducted for the duration of a week with residents living in a long-term care home. Participation rates were higher in the in-person condition. However, caregiver questionnaire results found no statistically significant difference in engagement and enjoyment of the older residents between the two robot presence conditions. The caregivers observed the residents engaged and enjoying dancing with both the in-person and remote robot during the dance sessions. Our study is the first to show the potential of using remote social HRI to provide interventions to older adults.