Robot motivator: Increasing user enjoyment and performance on a physical/cognitive task

Abstract

We describe the design and implementation of a socially assistive robot that is able to monitor the performance of a user during a combined cognitive and physical task, with the purpose of providing motivation to the user to complete the task and to improve task performance. The work presented aims to study the effects of verbal praise, encouragement, and motivation on a user's enjoyment of the task, and to analyze the effectiveness of online adaptation of the task in response to user performance, with the goal of reducing user frustration and increasing user intrinsic motivation. A three-condition study was constructed for evaluation of the robot; the results of the robot's interaction with human users are presented.