Effects of robot assisted activity for elderly people at day service center and analysis of its factors

We have been developing robots that provide psychological, physiological, and social effects to human beings through physical interaction. The appearances of these robots look like real animals such as a cat or seal. We have been applying these robots to assisting activity of elderly people at a day service center. In order to investigate the effect of these robots on the elderly people, we evaluated elderly people's mood by questionnaires. The robots were provided in the day service center for five weeks. As the results, feelings of elderly people were improved by interaction with the robots. Moreover, by analysis of factors that influence the feelings of elderly, we found factors such as time of touch divided by number of touch in the 2/sup nd/ week, and experiences of breeding pets in the 5/sup th/ week. Consequently, these robots were useful at elderly institutions like the day service center, and the factors of mental effects on elderly change with passage of time. We consider that functions of making unique relationship between a person and a robot are important to preserve the effects of mental commit robots.