A Socially Interactive Robot Using Social Skills In Physical Training

In this paper, we propose a socially interactive robot facilitating social skills and identify the effects of robot social skills, to help maintain a natural and sustained interaction between humans and robot in a physical training. To that end, we conducted an experiment with 28 participants using the humanoid robot Nao. As a result, there were significant differences in 7 out of 9 measured categories between the control group where social skills were not used, and the experimental group where social skills were used by the robot. Therefore, social skills including feedback, mutual gaze and social distance should be consider as a positive social cues for physical training.