Physical Contact Interaction based on Touch Sensory Information for Robot Partners

In recent years, the number of elderly people over the age of 65 who live alone has increased year by year. In particular, the frequency of conversation for the elderly tends to decrease to less than once in two weeks, and the frequency of going out from home tends also to decrease at a rate of less than once in 2–3 days. As a result, it has led to the social isolation of the elderly, and has caused social problems such as progression of dementia and lonely death [1]. For that reason, it is necessary to provide support to increase the frequency of conversation among isolated elderly people. Accordingly, researches on human robot interaction are attracting attention. The interaction with robot partners could create a good stimulating environment so that the elderly could communicate with their family and others. Therefore, we focus on the interaction between humans and robots, and develop a robot system that focuses on increasing the frequency of conversations caused by touching. In this paper, we explain the robot partner system that used touch sensory information. Then, we show experimental results of the effectiveness of robot partner system, and discuss the applicability of the proposed system.