Verification of the effect of using multiple therapy robots on stress reduction

Abstract

Stress caused by various factors has become a problem in recent years, and countermeasures need to be taken. Therapy robots have been attracting increasing attention as a countermeasure to this problem due to the development of robot technology. Although therapy robots have been studied in the past, there have been few studies using multiple robots. It has been reported that the use of multiple service robots improves the effectiveness of apologies, etc. It is possible that the use of multiple therapy robots can also improve the effectiveness of stress reduction. In this study, we developed a therapy robot "MULPY" that works with multiple robots to clarify the effect of multiple therapy robots on the stress reduction effect. We defined daily life stress as stress, and stress reduction as improvement in each index before and after interaction with the therapy robots. Objective and subjective evaluations were conducted before and after touching the robot, and the stress reduction effect was verified in the one-, two-, and three-robot conditions. The experimental results showed that the most stress reduction effect was obtained when two therapy robots were used, but the effect was not sufficient when three robots were used.