A pilot study on the eBear socially assistive robot: Implication for interacting with elderly people with moderate depression
This paper presents the details of a pilot study on using the eBear, an animal-like social robot equipped with artificial intelligence in assisting elderly people with depression. The eBear can show facial expression and head gesture, understand users' emotion using audio-visual sensory inputs and machine learning, speak and show relatively accurate visual speech, and have dialog with users. The eBear can also respond to their questions by querying the Internet, encourage them to physically be more active, and perform simple physical exercises. To understand the effectiveness of the eBear on the mood and happiness of elderly people, the eBear was used in a pilot study in which seven elderly people with no to moderate depression interacted with the eBear for about 45 minutes three times a week over one month. The results of the pilot study show that interacting with the eBear can increase happiness and mood of these human users as measured by the Face Scale, and the Geriatric Depression Scale score systems.