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Conference Paper
Cultivating Connection: A Feasibility Study of Robot-Mediated Plant Care and Emotional Support for Older Adults
- Authors
- Cheonshu Park
- Issue Date
- 2026-03
- Citation
- International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) 2026, pp.136-139
- ISSN
- 4007-2321
- Publisher
- ACM
- Language
- English
- Type
- Conference Paper
- Abstract
- This paper presents a pilot study examining how a mobile home robot can support older adults through plant care activities combined with conversational emotional support. The system integrates autonomous navigation, vision-based plant health assessment, and large language model-driven dialogue to address participants’ mood, cognitive concerns, and daily living activities over a three-week intervention. Five community-dwelling older adults (aged 65+) participated in weekly sessions at a living lab environment, where the robot guided plant care tasks and engaged in structured conversations across four domains: depression screening, cognitive self-assessment, instrumental activities of daily living, and personal preferences. Standardized questionnaires administered after each of the three sessions measured cognitive function, technology acceptance, daily vitality, and psychological stability. Friedman tests across all three sessions revealed statistically significant improvements in psychological stability (χ2(2) = 7.60, p = .022) and robot acceptance (χ2(2) = 8.40, p = .015). The study demonstrates the technical feasibility and preliminary evidence of deploying such services with older adults and identifies key considerations for scaling the intervention.
- Keyword
- Social human-robot interaction, robot-mediated plant care, emotional support, older adults
- KSP Keywords
- Activities of Daily Living(ADLs), Cognitive function, Emotional support, Home robot, Human robot interaction(HRI), Living Lab, Model driven, Older adults, Personal Preference, Pilot Study, Self-assessment
This work is distributed under the term of Creative Commons License (CCL)
(CC BY)
(CC BY)
