Robot-Assisted Training with Swedish and Israeli Older Adults

This paper explores robot-assisted training in a cross-cultural context with older adults. We performed user studies with 28 older adults with two different assistive training robots: an adaptive robot, and a non-adaptive robot, in two countries (Sweden and Israel). In the adaptive robot group, the robot suggested playing music and decreased the number of repetitions based on the participant's level of engagement. We analyzed the facial expressions of the participants in these two groups. Results revealed that older adults in the adaptive robot group showed more varying facial expressions. The adaptive robot created a distraction for the older adults since it talked more than the non-adaptive robot. This result suggests that a robot designed for older adults should utilize the right amount of communication capabilities. The Israeli participants expressed more positive attitudes towards robots and rated the perceived usefulness of the robot higher than the Swedish participants.