A Social Robot to support mental health

Thesis und Einzelpraktikum zum Thema "A Social Robot to support mental health " zu vergeben Social robots are autonomous robots with a physical embodiment that can interact and communicate with humans or other autonomous physical agents by following social behaviors and rules. In this thesis we explore opportunities to use such a social robot in the context of mental health to support users wellbeing. More specifically, the aim is to create an interactive diary using the humanoid robot and explore the impact of this on self-reflection and wellbeing. As it is important to fully implement the behavior of social robots when conducting a study in order for participants to really be able to interact with the system and get insights into the experience of the interaction, the implementation part of this thesis can be done as a practical course (Einzelpraktikum, 6 ECTS points).

The thesis includes:

• Literature review on social robots in the context of wellbeing and mental health
• Develop and implement of a NAO robot routine (Einzelpraktikum)
• Conduct a user study
• Evaluate results

The practical course includes:

• Set up the NAO robot
• Implementation of a robot routine (either a novel idea or reuse of existing code)

We use the tool Choreograph and the programming language Python to work with the robot.

Your profile:

• Prior experience in Python programming
• Interest in the field of human-robot interaction
• Interest in mental health and psychological aspects of interactions
• Understanding of human-computer interaction
• Independent working style

This thesis is co-supervised by Sophia and Svenja. Feel free to contact us (in German or English) if you are interested and tell us about your prior experiences as well as your Transcript of Records.