Field test of manual for robot therapy using seal robot

摘要

Robot therapy is expected to have psychological, physiological and social effects as well as animal therapy. Especially, therapeutic seal robot, Paro is used in the various facilities for elderly and spreading in the world. However, the caregivers used Paro freely, and the way of using Paro was different among them. Therefore, the effects are influenced by their skills. The manual which shows effective ways to use Paro has been needed. So far, the manual was developed by extracting the caregiver's skills (presented at IEEE RO-MAN 2010). In this paper, the manual was introduced to 4 elderly facilities, and then, its effectiveness was investigated by 9 caregivers and 12 patients. As the results, caregivers' intervention was improved after reading the manual, and then, elderly people's smile was increased.