To address the global challenge of population aging, our goal is to enhance successful aging through the introduction of robots capable of assisting in daily physical activities and promoting light exercises, which would enhance the cognitive and physical well-being of older adults. Previous studies have shown that facial expressions can increase engagement when interacting with robots. This study aims to investigate how older adults perceive and interact with a robot capable of displaying facial emotions while performing a physical exercise task together. We employed a collaborative robotic arm with a flat panel screen to encourage physical exercise across three different facial emotion conditions. We ran the experiment with older adults aged between 66 and 88. Our findings suggest that individuals perceive robots exhibiting facial expressions as less competent than those without such expressions. Additionally, the presence of facial expressions does not appear to significantly impact participants' levels of engagement, unlike other state-of-the-art studies. This observation is likely linked to our study's emphasis on collaborative physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) applications, as opposed to socially oriented pHRI applications. Additionally, we foresee a requirement for more suitable non-verbal social behavior to effectively enhance participants' engagement levels.

翻译：为应对全球人口老龄化的挑战，我们的目标是通过引入能够协助日常身体活动并促进轻度锻炼的机器人，来增强老年人群的成功老龄化，从而提升其认知与身体健康水平。先前研究表明，在与机器人交互时，面部表情能够提升参与度。本研究旨在探究老年人在共同完成身体锻炼任务时，如何感知与交互具备面部情绪表达能力的机器人。我们采用配备平板屏幕的协作机械臂，在三种不同面部情绪条件下鼓励身体锻炼。实验对象为66至88岁的老年人。研究结果表明，相较于无面部表情的机器人，参与者认为展现面部表情的机器人的能力较低。此外，与最新的研究不同，面部表情的存在并未显著影响参与者的参与度。这一现象可能与我们研究侧重于协作型物理人机交互（pHRI）应用，而非社交导向型pHRI应用有关。同时，我们预见到需要更合适的非言语社交行为来有效提升参与者的参与度水平。