Design and Evaluation of a Personal Robot Playing a Self-Management for Children with Obesity

The preponderance of obesity and being overweight among children has increased significantly during the last two decades in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) with overwhelming consequences to public health. Most recommended approaches have paid attention to a healthier diet and physical activity (PA) to reduce obesity. Recent research shows that the use of social robots could play a vital role in encouraging children to improve their skills in self-management. As children need to be surprised and feel a sense of enjoyment when involved in any activity where they can spend time and actively engage in activities, social robots could be an effective intervention for this purpose. In this context, the current project aimed to build an innovation social robot system to offer a set of activities to help obese children improve their capabilities to manage their selves properly and increase their obesity knowledge. This study aimed to determine the perceptions of obese children towards the NAO robot, a new medical technology, and analyze their responses to the robot’s advice and education-related activities. A proposed model of the intervention using the NAO robot is discussed in this study, and a pilot study was conducted to assess the performance of the proposed system. The obtained results showed an average acceptability of 89.37% for social robots to be involved in obesity management.