Delivering Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Using A Conversational Social Robot

Abstract

Social robots are becoming an integrated part of our daily life due to their ability to provide companionship and entertainment. A subfield of robotics, Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR), is particularly suitable for expanding these benefits into the healthcare setting because of its unique ability to provide cognitive, social, and emotional support. This paper presents our recent research on developing SAR by evaluating the ability of a life-like conversational social robot, called Ryan, to administer internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) to older adults with depression. For Ryan to administer the therapy, we developed a dialogue-management system, called Program-R. Using an accredited CBT manual for the treatment of depression, we created seven hour-long iCBT dialogues and integrated them into Program-R using Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML). To assess the effectiveness of Robot-based iCBT and users' likability of our approach, we conducted an HRI study with a cohort of elderly people with mild-to-moderate depression over a period of four weeks. Quantitative analyses of participant's spoken responses (e.g. word count and sentiment analysis), face-scale mood scores, and exit surveys, strongly support the notion robot-based iCBT is a viable alternative to traditional human-delivered therapy.

Conversational Affective Social Robots for Ageing and Dementia Support

“…Exemplary mobile and small robots for mental health support, including companionship, health monitoring, cognitive stimulation, and clinical therapy. (a) GrowMu [46], (b) Pepper from SoftBank Robotics [22], (c) Hobbit [20], (d) RAMCIP [47], (e) CompanionAble [21], (f) Kompai [48], (g) Silbot [49], (h) Bandit [19], (i) Reeti [50], (j) PaPeRo [51], (k) iCat [52] (l) IrobIQ [53], (m) Screening robot [54], (n) Mini [55], (o) Ryan [56], (p) Milo [57], (q) NAO from SoftBank Robotics [23], (r) Eva [58], (s) Sota [59].…”

“…Some of the robotic platforms reviewed were able to monitor user's wellbeing and overall health (14%). Importantly, the role of assisting patients with cognitive impairment or dementia in clinical therapies was the less common (10%), targeted by five robots only (with published results of SAR interventions): NAO [23], Eva [58], Sota [59], Bandit [19], and Ryan [56]. There is a clear gap in clinical translation of SAR platforms particularly for dementia care.…”

“…Importantly, end-users' feedback should be considered at all iterative design stages of conversational robots, which could be achieved through patient public involvement (PPI) with various focus group discussions. [59] Memory and dance therapy n=71 older adults, PwD; setting unspecified Ryan [56] Cognitive behavioural therapy n=4 older adults with mildto-moderate depression; senior living facility Screening robot [54] Home-based cognitive and wellbeing screening n=30 older adults; unspecified setting VI. CONCLUSION Worldwide, the ageing population has caused a marked increase in the number of people with cognitive decline linked to dementia.…”

Evaluation of Abstraction Capabilities and Detection of Discomfort with a Newscaster Chatbot for Entertaining Elderly Users

“…Regarding user monitoring, we can cite the Ryan robot for cognitive behavioural therapy for elders diagnosed with depressive disorder [ 34 ] and the chatbot in [ 35 ], which reminds of appointments and medication doses to elderly people, and transmits physiological parameters back to a control centre. However, these have no entertainment capabilities.…”

A Robot That Encourages Self-Disclosure to Reduce Anger Mood

“…For example, researchers developed a virtual agent that behaves like a counselor [24,25]. Others investigated the effectiveness of robot-enhanced therapy for autistic children [26] or senior citizens [27]. Another study focused on the effectiveness of the embodiment of agents to encourage self-disclosure [20], i.e., because robots have advantages over non-embodied conversational agents.…”