Stress management is essential for a healthy life. Regular life activities can be influenced by stress, which could impact overall health in the long run. The present study used the social robot NAO as a supporting tool to recommend stress-relief remedies to participants. This pilot study started with filling up a pre-observation questionnaire by eighteen participants who further participated in two scenarios: watching an entertaining video to relax and playing a game to induce stress, with data collected on their facial expressions and physiological responses through NAO and Empatica E4, respectively. Further, artificial intelligence models were applied to predict stress, which resulted in the identification of stress in eight participants. Subsequently, NAO was programmed to provide recommendations to address stress, which are conversational and related to basic exercises and listening to music. The aim of this study is to examine the feasibility of deploying social robots in stressful situations and explore whether robot recommendations are beneficial for a stressed person. The findings of the study suggest most of the participants found NAO recommendations helpful to a certain extent in alleviating stress. Further, using entertaining video for relaxation was found to be the right tool to some extent by most of the participants; however, some mentioned their own preferred choices instead of watching video. At the same time, their opinions regarding selected game to induce stress are mixed. In the future, more participants will be recruited for the experiment, and social robot will be programmed to provide more recommendations.

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Human-Robot Interaction for Stress Mitigation: A Pilot Study with Social Robot

  • Akshara Pande,
  • Anshul Rani,
  • Bhavana Nachenahalli Bhuthegowda,
  • Deepti Mishra

摘要

Stress management is essential for a healthy life. Regular life activities can be influenced by stress, which could impact overall health in the long run. The present study used the social robot NAO as a supporting tool to recommend stress-relief remedies to participants. This pilot study started with filling up a pre-observation questionnaire by eighteen participants who further participated in two scenarios: watching an entertaining video to relax and playing a game to induce stress, with data collected on their facial expressions and physiological responses through NAO and Empatica E4, respectively. Further, artificial intelligence models were applied to predict stress, which resulted in the identification of stress in eight participants. Subsequently, NAO was programmed to provide recommendations to address stress, which are conversational and related to basic exercises and listening to music. The aim of this study is to examine the feasibility of deploying social robots in stressful situations and explore whether robot recommendations are beneficial for a stressed person. The findings of the study suggest most of the participants found NAO recommendations helpful to a certain extent in alleviating stress. Further, using entertaining video for relaxation was found to be the right tool to some extent by most of the participants; however, some mentioned their own preferred choices instead of watching video. At the same time, their opinions regarding selected game to induce stress are mixed. In the future, more participants will be recruited for the experiment, and social robot will be programmed to provide more recommendations.