Master's Thesis Proposals

Enhancing social interaction through robot-mediated games for healthy aging

Gamified robot-mediated activities have the potential to promote cognitive and physical training for healthy aging. Enhancing such platforms through multiplayer features might also enhance social interaction and engagement through increased communication and emotional responsiveness in multiplayer environments. This project aims to investigate the effect of robot-mediated games on communication and social interaction between players to encourage physical and cognitive training of the elderly within a multiplayer context.

The Master’s project will focus on conducting the experiments and analysis of data (motion data, video recordings, and qualitative interviews etc.) to investigate older adults’ interaction patterns while playing multiple games with ranging inter-player interaction modalities and different game elements. 

The project has two main objectives:: 

1) Investigating the effect of game elements on social interaction within different age groups through experimental design

2) Investigate the user experience of such gamified activities through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to improve the game design 

The project will be conducted in collaboration with CBH and RPL.  

Contact:

Main Supervisor: Sanna Kuoppamäki, Assistant Professor,

Co-supervisor: Arzu Guneysu Ozgur, Digital Futures Postdoctoral Fellow, Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning,