I did my fieldwork on Human-Robots Interaction at a nursing home in Tokyo with Prof. Takanori Shibata, who is father of a therapeutic robot, Paro.
The nursing home use many different kinds of robots, not only “robots suits” by Cyberdyne but also communication robots such as Aibo, Pepper and Paro.
The first photo shows elderly people with dementia sat together in a common room as they have to be awake during the daytime. Some watched TV, others did nothing.
But this silence was suddenly broken when the nurse brought in Aibo and Paro. The residents became very excited, alive and smiling – touching and talking to robots. Gradually, however, the excitement wears off – and a few began dozing off again.
However, when the nurse came to sit next to them, they became happy to talk with the nurse while holding Paro, as you can see in the second photo.
Not only elderly people but the nurses too seemed happy.
The care manager, Yukari Sekiguchi told me, “the greatest effect of robots that they bring smiles to our nurses”. Paro makes elderly people calm dawn and reduces the tension between them and the nurses.
The significance is this: social robots are not just about healing people; they act as media to connect and reinforce social intimacy between people at the affective level.
