Drink-O-Mender

Abstract

Social robots become increasingly important in the domain of healthcare and maintenance. Nutrition is not an exception: research robots are used in several experiments to teach people about healthy nutrition. Moreover, robotic products, whose task is to keep track of the user's nutrition, to provide tips, reminders, and to recognize anomalies in health-related behaviors are on the way to market. To convince users of a robot's recommendations, speech is an important interaction modality. However, automatically adapting a robot's spoken advise depending on users' behaviors is still a challenge. We address this issue by building Drink-O-Mender, an interactive installation, which includes a Reeti robot augmented with additional sensing and adaptation abilities. The robot is designed to offer drinks in a social setting. It aims to convince users of consuming healthy drinks while adapting its spoken advices depending on the users' selected beverage choices. The installation is equipped with custom hardware including a smartscale to sense the type and quantity of consumed drinks. We describe the interactive installation in detail and demonstrate feasibility of generating adaptive spoken advices by reporting on insights gained from exhibiting the installation during a public event and observing interactions of 78 users with the robot.