Pepper Robot Research: Using Artificial Intelligence Social Robot to Ease Loneliness

Pepper from SoftBank Robotics

New research shows that people who interact with social robots gradually become more open and feel less lonely.

This research was led by the University of Glasgow and published in the International Journal of Social Robotics. This study also found that interacting with social robots can gradually improve people's mood, indicating that social robots can be used as an effective intervention to support people's emotional health. This study aims to examine people's long-term and repeated use of social robots, especially to study people's self-disclosure of emotions.

experimental method

This study used two discussion groups to conduct a controlled experiment, with participants from across the UK. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two discussion groups and had multiple conversations with the robot Pepper using Zoom video to explore general, everyday topics (such as social relationships, health and happiness). One group's chat topics were based on the epidemic, including social relationships and mental health during the epidemic; while the other group's chat topics were similar, but did not explicitly mention the epidemic. In each interaction, the robot asked participants three questions, and the topics were randomly assigned before the experiment began. Participants interacted with the robot twice a week during prearranged times for five weeks.

Pepper from SoftBank Robotics

experiment process

Each interaction is led by Pepper, conducting a semi-structured interview discussing non-sensitive topics about general, day-to-day experiences. Participants engage in a brief conversation with Pepper, following Pepper's lead and answering questions, with the interaction typically taking about five to ten minutes. In the first interaction with Pepper, the robot will ask the participant's name (i.e., "Hello, my name is Pepper, what is your name?"), and after the participant introduces himself, Pepper will Use

face recognition

to address participants by their first names to provide a natural sense of interaction. Pepper will respond neutrally or empathically to participant answers and statements. Meanwhile, Pepper uses a cheerful, high-pitched voice and expressive body language to communicate. Following guidelines for long-term interaction design in social robots, Pepper's responses are emotional and resonant, designed to convey an understanding of the user's emotional state and display contextually relevant emotional responses.

In addition, by turning on the "Basic Awareness" function, Pepper can divert or move the gaze from the camera without pre-programmed logic. To ensure a natural interaction, Pepper's eyes move naturally with the presentation software, matching the typical behavior of human interlocutors talking to each other.

The study found

The study found that over time, people revealed more information to the robot and spoke for longer. At the same time, people also believe that the robot has gradually improved in terms of social ability; during the communication process with the robot, participants also found that the response of the robot was becoming more and more comfortable, and they said that their mood had improved and their sense of loneliness had improved. It has also been alleviated.

In terms of happiness, participants’ moods improved after interacting with Pepper, and participants rated Pepper’s responses as more comforting. These findings provide further evidence of the positive outcomes of using social robots as an intervention to support people's well-being. In addition, as the experiment time went by, the participants' loneliness decreased significantly. Loneliness is both a risk factor and a symptom of mental disorders, and social robots are often discussed as potential companions for people with autism. The findings show that repeated interactions with social robots can reduce people's feelings of loneliness. Through further innovation, social robots will become one of the powerful means to solve the public health problem of loneliness.

These results provide meaningful evidence for user experience, acceptance and trust in social robots. From this point of view,

Pepper robot can play an important role in the fields of health care, nursing, companionship and psychological problem intervention in the future

.

Dr. Guy Laban, associate research associate at the University of Glasgow and postdoctoral associate at the University of Cambridge, said: "Studies like this are crucial given recent advances in artificial intelligence (such as GPT). They help We better understand how humans can develop healthy relationships with artificial intelligence entities, such as robots, to effectively use this technology in the future."

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