“Behavior Observation Robot” for field study

Abstract

In field studies, psychological aspects and natural states of humans are evaluated and analyzed by behavior observation. To assure objectivity, a sufficient number of observers are required to record data. In addition, manual and automatic image analysis methods using video recordings are used in field observations. However, such methods are difficult to adapt to changes in position and occlusion of the subject. We propose the "Behavior Observation Robot" to solve such problems in field studies. We focused on the field study of robot therapy at a facility for the elderly to assess experimentally the proposed system.