Socially Assistive Robots
Prior work has established that the mere presence of a robot
can positively affect user compliance in an array of contexts. In
previous work where participants were recruited for a weightloss
program, Kidd found that adherence to the program was
shortest when participants tracked their progress with penand-
paper, longer with a computer interface, and significantly
longer when reporting their progress to a robot [21]. Even
a very simple robot—a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot augmented
with a facial display—has been shown to be capable
of helping people with medication compliance [42]. Social
facilitation theory [28] provides some explanation for the effectiveness
of robots in these contexts; the presence of an
embodied humanlike robot increases motivation in the same
way that the presence of other people increases an individual’s
drive and enhances their performance in tasks in which
the individual is skilled. The robot’s physical embodiment
and shared physical context create an opportunity for strong
engagement between the robot and the user