Socially assistive robots help anxiety homework with cloud web support
A Deployable Architecture for Robot-Mediated Tasks (DART): Evaluation in Socially Assistive Robot-Guided Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Exercises
Robotics
Summary
It can be hard and costly for robots to do complex health tasks over time. The authors created DART, a system that connects a simple robot with a web app and cloud servers, so it can show images, accept user answers, and store progress. They tested this setup with students using a robot to help with anxiety exercises and found it reduced stress and was easy to use. The system worked well both in the lab and for several weeks at home, though users wanted better speech, visuals, and syncing.
What this means in practice
- •For mental health technology developers: Provide scalable robot-guided therapy exercises with cloud-supported interaction and data storage for anxiety treatment.
- •For home healthcare device makers: Create affordable assistive robots that combine with web apps for at-home cognitive behavioral therapy practice and progress tracking.$Commercial implications: Enables production of low-cost therapy robots with cloud features for in-home mental health support suitable for commercial sale.
Authors
Mina Kian, Lydia Ignatova, Jiong Wang, Ji Min Lee, Jiancheng Li, Qianwei Guo, Emily Weiss, Amy O'Connell, Kaitlin Zareno, Jiani Li, Reyna Patel, Leyaa George, Minyu Huang, Justin Yang, Maja J. Matarić
Abstract
Socially assistive robots (SARs) can support structured health and well-being interventions, but hardware and cost constraints limit interaction complexity and longitudinal real-world deployments. We present DART: Deployable Architecture for Robot-Mediated Tasks, an architecture that extends SARs through a web application and cloud infrastructure, enabling visual content, user input, remote computation, and persistent data storage synergistically with the robot's physical embodiment, speech, and movement. We evaluated DART by instantiating it in an interatively-developed full-stack HRI system for helping university students with elevated generalized anxiety to complete cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) homework exercises. The resulting system, which used the low-cost open-source Blossom robot platform, was refined and evaluated through a participatory design process and multiple user studies, and finally evaluated in an in-lab study with 103 participants, and then a six-week in-home deployment with four participants. In the in-lab evaluation, participants showed significant within-session reductions in stress, state anxiety, and negative affect, and gave the platform a mean System Usability Scale score of 78.89. In the home deployment, the mean System Usability Scale score was 87.5, with positive qualitative feedback on usability. Participants across both groups identified speech input, visual presentation, and web-robot synchronization as priorities for improvement. These findings validate DART as an effective architecture for extending the capabilities of a low-cost SAR in both in-lab single-session and in real-world longitudinal deployments.