A Humanoid Social Agent Embodying Physical Assistance Enhances Motor Training Experience
Giulia Belgiovine, Francesco Rea, Jacopo Zenzeri, Alessandra, Sciutti

TL;DR
This study shows that humanoid robots providing physical assistance and social interaction can improve motor learning, motivation, and enjoyment in training tasks without increasing perceived effort.
Contribution
It demonstrates that social behaviors in humanoid robots enhance motivation and enjoyment in motor training, alongside effective skill acquisition through physical assistance.
Findings
Participants improved stabilization skills with robot assistance
Humanoid social interaction increased motivation and enjoyment
No negative impact on attention or perceived effort
Abstract
Skilled motor behavior is critical in many human daily life activities and professions. The design of robots that can effectively teach motor skills is an important challenge in the robotics field. In particular, it is important to understand whether the involvement in the training of a robot exhibiting social behaviors impacts on the learning and the experience of the human pupils. In this study, we addressed this question and we asked participants to learn a complex task - stabilizing an inverted pendulum - by training with physical assistance provided by a robotic manipulandum, the Wristbot. One group of participants performed the training only using the Wristbot, whereas for another group the same physical assistance was attributed to the humanoid robot iCub, who played the role of an expert trainer and exhibited also some social behaviors. The results obtained show that…
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