Objective Evaluation of the Effects of Human-Robot Communication Using Gaze and Cerebral Blood Flow

Aim: With the rapidly declining birth rate and population aging in Japan, the government supports the use of robots to address the problems of insufficient human resources and economic funding to provide adequate care to older adults. This study aimed to analyze the changes in eye gaze and cerebral blood flow during conversations between humans and robots to objectively evaluate its impact on humans.
Methods: The research was conducted from April to December 2022. The study participants were three nursing students in their 20s to 40s at University A. PALRO (Fujisoft) was used as the communication robot (CR). The participants wore a HOT-2000 (NeU) brain activity meter and had a 15-minute conversation with the CR after resting for 15 min in a room separate from the experimental room. The gaze data were divided into six areas, and descriptive statistics were obtained.
Results: The cerebral blood flow (right and left) was categorized into that obtained at rest time, during the conversation, and during characteristic scenes (scenes from which participant smiles and laughter were extracted). Welch’s one-way ANOVA was performed. The participants most commonly gazed at the area around the face, even if the other party was the robot. Blood flow was significantly higher during scenes involving laughter than during other scenes. The heart rate also increased, suggesting an effect on the human autonomic nervous system.
Conclusion: Although the participants who experienced this experiment were not older adults, many communication robots have been installed in facilities for the elderly in Japan. This result considers that conversations with a robot are effective in preventing lonely older adults from decreasing their activities and the resultant decline in activity of daily living (ADL) and function.

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