Development of depression assessment tools using humanoid robots -Can tele-operated robots talk with depressive persons like humans?

BACKGROUND: Depression is a common mental disorder and causes significant social loss. Early intervention for depression is important. Nonetheless, depressed patients tend to conceal their symptoms from others based on shame and stigma, thus hesitate to visit psychiatrists especially during early phase. We hypothesize that application of humanoid robots would be a novel solution. Depressed patients may feel more comfortable talking with such robots than humans. METHODS: We recruited 13 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 27 healthy volunteers as controls. Participants took both tele-operated humanoid robot and human interviews to evaluate severity of depression using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS). In addition, participants completed a self-administered questionnaire asking about their impressions of the robot interview. RESULTS: Confidence interval and t-test analysis have revealed that the HDRS scores are equally reliable between robot and human interviews. No significant differences were observed between the two interviews regarding "nervousness about the interview" and "hesitancy to talk about depressed moods and suicidal ideation." Compared to human interviews, robot interviews yielded significantly lower scores on shame-related factors especially among patients with MDD. LIMITATION: Small sample size, and the evaluator is male only. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first report to show the reliability of tele-operated humanoid robot interviews for assessment of depression. Robot interviews are potentially equally reliable as human interviews. Robot interviews are suggested to be more appropriate in assessing shame-related suppressed emotions and hidden thoughts of depressed patients in clinical practice, which may reduce the stigma associated with depression.

Behavioral Assessment of a Humanoid Robot When Attracting Pedestrians in a Mall.

Research is currently being conducted on the use of robots as human labor support technology. In particular, the service industry needs to allocate more manpower, and it will be important for robots to support people. This study focuses on using a humanoid robot as a social service robot to convey information in a shopping mall, and the types of robot behaviors were analyzed. In order to convey the information, two processes must occur. Pedestrians must stop in front of the robot, and the robot must continue the engagement with them. For the purpose of this study, three types of autonomous robot behaviors were analyzed and compared in these processes in the experiment: greeting, in-trouble, dancing behaviors. After interactions were attempted with 5,000+ pedestrians, this study revealed that the in-trouble behavior can make pedestrians stop more and stay longer. In addition, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the robot in a real environment, the comparative results between three robot behaviors and human advertisers revealed that (1) the results of the greeting and dancing behavior are comparable to those of the humans, and (2) the performance of the in-trouble behavior in providing information tasks is higher than that of all human advertisers. These findings demonstrate that the performance of robots is comparable to that of humans in providing information tasks in a limited environment; therefore, it is expected that service robots as a labor support technology will be able to perform well in the real world.