Will People Enjoy a Robot Trainer? A Case Study with Snoopie the Pacerbot

TL;DR

This study explores whether a robot quadruped can effectively and enjoyably serve as a personal trainer for runners, demonstrating improved adherence and user preference over wearable devices.

Contribution

The paper introduces SNOOPIE, an autonomous robot quadruped trainer, and provides empirical evidence of its effectiveness and user preference compared to a wearable trainer.

Findings

60.6% better adherence to pace schedule with the robot

45.9% more consistent running speeds using the robot

Participants preferred the robot trainer for ease of use, enjoyability, and helpfulness

Abstract

The physicality of exercise makes the role of athletic trainers unique. Their physical presence allows them to guide a student through a motion, demonstrate an exercise, and give intuitive feedback. Robot quadrupeds are also embodied agents with robust agility and athleticism. In our work, we investigate whether a robot quadruped can serve as an effective and enjoyable personal trainer device. We focus on a case study of interval training for runners: a repetitive, long-horizon task where precision and consistency are important. To meet this challenge, we propose SNOOPIE, an autonomous robot quadruped pacer capable of running interval training exercises tailored to challenge a user's personal abilities. We conduct a set of user experiments that compare the robot trainer to a wearable trainer device--the Apple Watch--to investigate the benefits of a physical embodiment in exercise-based interactions. We demonstrate 60.6% better adherence to a pace schedule and were 45.9% more consistent across their running speeds with the quadruped trainer. Subjective results also showed that participants strongly preferred training with the robot over wearable devices across many qualitative axes, including its ease of use (+56.7%), enjoyability of the interaction (+60.6%), and helpfulness (+39.1%). Additional videos and visualizations can be found on our website: https://sites.google.com/view/snoopie