NAO Takes a Bow
Meet NAO (pronounced “now”), an adorable two-foot-tall robot who captured the hearts of residents at Brookdale Arlington in Texas. These residents met NAO when they participated in an innovative study conducted by an interdisciplinary team from the University of Texas at Arlington’s Department of Theatre Arts, School of Social Work, and University of Texas-Arlington Research Institute (UTARI) in Fort Worth.
The study titled Shakespeare and Robots: Examining the impact of a theater intervention on psychological well-being in older adults, set out to change the human-to-human model of participatory arts. “The goal of the trial was to see if a theatre arts intervention with a human-robot model would be successful in promoting the well-being of an older adult,” said Dr. Julienne Greer, assistant professor of theatre arts at UTA.