When robots invite you to play : Proactive AI for older adult gaming engagement

Sammanfattning

This study investigates how proactive AI behaviours in social robots shape gaming motivation among adults aged 65 and older. Using a mixed‑methods approach, it first assessed general gaming motivations through an online survey (n = 17) and then examined how these motivations translated into human–robot interaction during playtests with a proactive gaming prototype on social robot Pepper (n = 3). Results show that core motivators—challenge, autonomy, and cognitive engagement can carry over into robot‑mediated gaming, whereas escapism and immersive solo engagement represent a structural divergence that social robots cannot replicate. Relatedness emerged as a central driver, expressed not only through human communities but also through personalised, relational interaction with the robot. Proactive features that conveyed social presence, such as encouragement, name recognition, and adaptive difficulty, were consistently motivating, whereas context‑insensitive behaviours were perceived as intrusive. Together, these findings suggest that proactive AI behaviours hold meaningful potential as a motivational mechanism in robot-mediated gaming for older adults, particularly when designed around social presence, authentic feedback, and user-configurable proactivity. [150 words]