SnuggleBot the Companion: Exploring In-Home Robot Interaction Strategies to Support Coping With Loneliness

We explored the use of three robot interaction strategies to support people living with loneliness (physical comfort, social engagement, requiring care), by building these into a robot prototype and deploying the robots into homes for long-term evaluation. We placed our original prototype, SnuggleBot, unsupervised into the homes of seven people for at least 7 weeks (optionally up to 6 months), with bi-weekly interviews, to investigate how people engage with our three robot interaction strategies. Our qualitative analysis illuminated how people engaged the robot based on all three interaction strategies. Further, some participants showed signs of bonding with the robot as well as self-reported wellbeing benefits, while some participants failed to achieve sustained use over time. Our results provide strong support for future research into robots developed with our interaction strategies, and general potential for supporting wellbeing.