Abstract:
Group meditation is known to keep people motivated and committed over longer periods of time compared to individual practice. Robotic coaching offers a promising approach to engaging people in group meditation and mindfulness exercises. However, the deployment of robotic coaches for group mindfulness sessions in real-world settings is still very limited. This paper presents initial steps in deploying a robotic mindfulness coach at a public café, where participants could join robot-led meditation sessions in a group setting.
Two studies were conducted with two robotic coaches: the toy-like Misty II robot for 4 weeks (n = 4) and the child-like QTrobot for 3 weeks (n = 3). This paper provides an exploratory qualitative analysis of data collected from group discussions after the sessions and researcher observations during the sessions. Additionally, the paper discusses lessons learned and future work related to deploying a robotic coach in a real-world group setting.
References:
Axelsson, Minja, Micol Spitale, and Hatice Gunes. “Robotic coaches delivering group mindfulness practice at a public cafe.” Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. 2023.