PREC 2019

Robots are increasingly introduced in a variety of domains. In such areas they are used as a tool for social assistance to help people at their homes, to be a guide in public spaces, as a teacher in classrooms or a coach in rehabilitative settings. In this workshop, we focus on robots as platforms, companions and coaches for helping people to exercise and increase their physical abilities.

A lack of sufficient physical activity is one of the leading risk factors for death worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that 25% of the adult population and 80% of the world's adolescent population are insufficiently physically [1] . Furthermore, 31% of all deaths worldwide are caused by Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD). People that are not sufficiently active are facing obesity and overweight, which are associated with chronic diseases, and have a lower health-related quality of live. Moreover, exercise training is strongly recommended for the prevention and treatment of pathologies with high prevalence such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Hence, cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is commonly used to prevent CVDs or to treat a patient post a CVD event to enhance the quality of life of the patients. The CR treatment can be considered as a tool to improve the quality of life of patients who have suffered a CVD and as a prevention tool. CR is related to physical activities or exercises for improving physical and mental levels aiming to recover an optimal daily living.

However, adequate physical activity is not only essential to remain quality of life for older adults or people suffering from a CVD, but it also important for people with particular disabilities such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Most of the current researches in the HRI community are focusing on empathy, communication, emotion but few works focus on exercise-based therapy. To increase coordination, body awareness, and social skills, mirroring exercises are used frequently. It helps the child to mimic the motions of another person. However, it is not only limited to mimicking, but previous studies also show that even regular exercises can lead to a decrease in stereotypy in people with ASD. Apart from ASD, there is also a strong connection between practice-based activities for children who struggle with developmental coordination disorder. They are doing exercises focusing on bilateral activities and symmetry problems. (ball throwing, catching, climbing, etc.). Since the decrease of physical activity in our society is influenced by a variety of factors \cite{factors}, it is crucial to tackling this problem from a multi-perspective and interdisciplinary point of view.

The interesting results and discussions developed in the first version of this workshop motive the authors to develop this new proposal. In this workshop, we want to discuss how different technologies (exergames, virtual agents, and robots) can be used to influence people's motivation to start and adhere to an exercise regime or to increase their physical activity level. Primarily, we want to discuss the requirements of robots for target groups (e.g., people with ASD or CVD) and concentrate on design methodologies for such user groups. Therefore, we target an interdisciplinary dialogue between physiotherapists, psychologists, computer scientists, roboticists and clinicians to discuss how personal robots might be useful for promoting physical activity and in rehabilitation with a focus on target user groups.