Long-term robot therapy in a health service facility for the aged - A case study for 5 years -

A long-term experiment of robot therapy for elderly people has been conducted at a health service facility for the aged since Aug. 2003. Three therapeutic seal robots, Paro, were introduced there. This paper describes the results of the experiment for five year. We regularly visited the facility twice or once a month and observed their interaction with the robots. Moreover, face scales that consist of illustrations of person´s faces were used to evaluate person´s moods. As the results, feelings of the elderly people were improved by interaction with the seal robots. The relationship the elderly and the robots still continued over the five year.