Robot therapy in a care house - its sociopsychological and physiological effects on the residents

Robot therapy for elderly residents in a care house has been conducted from June, 2005. Two therapeutic seal robots were introduced, and activated for over 9 hours every day to interact with the residents. This paper presents a progress report of this experiment. In order to investigate psychological and social influences of the robots, each subject was interviewed, and their social network was analysed. In addition, their hormones in urine: 17 Ketosteroid sulfate (17-KS-S) and 17-hydroxycorticosteroids (17-OHCS) were obtained and analysed. The results indicate that the density of the social networks was increased through interaction with the seal robots. Furthermore, urinary tests showed that the reactions of the subjects´ vital organs to stress were improved after the introduction of the robots