Sleep disorders are an increasing problem. Medications can combat symptoms, but they have side effects and can lead to addiction. Other methods such as relaxation exercises, meditation, yoga or similar also help, but require a lot of discipline and perseverance from those affected. A Japanese research team has now shown a possible alternative.
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Satomi Kato Doi’s team had around 30 patients suffering from sleep disorders do breathing exercises for three minutes every evening while holding a robotic doll in their arms. In contrast to the control group, the sleep quality of the intervention group improved significantly. Because the patients found the robotic doll held in their arms comfortable, they were more motivated to keep up the regular breathing exercises.
Creating a “sense of emotional presence” via robots
The robot doll Hugvie is already around ten years old and was originally developed with a completely different motivation. It comes from the laboratories of the Japanese robot researcher Hiroshi Ishiguro, who is actually known for his extremely lifelike humanoids – which, however, have a very spooky effect on humans. Ishiguro had therefore started researching what minimal features a robot would have to have in order to be intuitively recognized by humans as alive and not threatening. A first result was the “Telenoid” – a robotic doll, about the size of a toddler, with minimal facial features. As a telepresence robot, the machine was designed to create a “sense of emotional presence” by allowing the user to remotely control arms, legs, and rudimentary facial features, while simultaneously speaking to the receiver holding the puppet via the built-in cellphone. The machine seemed rather spooky to me – however, Ishiguro and colleagues were actually able to show that just holding the robot puppet reduces the stress level.
Image 1 of 7 Human or robot: Robot researcher Hiroshi Ishiguro (left) became known for his robotic images.
(Bild: Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, ATR)
Hugvie dolls no longer have any recognizable facial features, and remote control of arms and legs is also gone. The only technical component that remains is a built-in smartphone, which is used to play the audio instructions for the evening breathing exercises. The researchers were able to show that the quality of sleep, which was determined by a standardized survey, improved significantly. However, only in those patients who did not report any other psychological problems such as depressive moods.
The researchers have not investigated whether artificial breathing movements, such as in the Somnox sleeping robot, would have an additional calming effect. The device caused quite a stir when it entered the market. However, the results of clinical studies are still pending.
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(wst)
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