Actively listening twin robots for long-duration conversation with the elderly

• Published in: ROBOMECH journal 2021-06, Vol.8 (1), p.1-10, Article 18
• Main Authors: Nishio, Toshiaki, Yoshikawa, Yuichiro, Iio, Takamasa, Chiba, Mariko, Asami, Taichi, Isoda, Yoshinori, Ishiguro, Hiroshi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Active listening; Artificial Intelligence; Computational Intelligence; Control and Systems Theory; Control systems; Conversational robot; Elderly people; Engineering; Human–robot interaction; Mechatronics; Multiple robots; Older people; Research Article; Robot control; Robotics and Automation; Robots; Talking
• ISSN: 2197-4225; 2197-4225
• DOI: 10.1186/s40648-021-00205-5

The number of isolated elderly people with few opportunities to talk to other people is currently increasing. Research is ongoing to develop talking robots for addressing the situation. The aim of the present study was to develop a talking robot that could converse with elderly people over an extended period. To enable long-duration conversation, we added a previously proposed active listening function for twining the robot dialogue system to prompt the user to say something. To verify the effectiveness of this function, a comparative experiment was performed using the proposed robot system and a control system with identical functions except the active listening function. The results showed that the conversation of the elderly subjects with the proposed robot system was significantly more than that with the control system. The capability of the developed robot system was further demonstrated in a nursing home for the elderly, where its conversation durations with different residents were measured. The results revealed that the robot could converse for more than 30 min with more than half of the elderly subjects. These results indicate that the additional function of the proposed talking robot system would enable elderly people to talk over longer periods of time.