Obesity is a chronic multifactorial pathology determined by genetic, psychological, social and environmental factors, by incorrect eating habits and a low level of physical activity. Very few individuals maintain long-term results achieved after diet therapy.
Therefore, there is urgent need to promote a persistent change in lifestyle in obese subjects, to improve adherence to treatment and to consolidate the results obtained over time. Therapeutic Education (TE) has taken over an important role as a multidisciplinary intervention aimed at improving lifestyle and at acquiring new skills for the management of the disease.
Although the the vast majority of people who attended TE programs considered them helpful, only a small portion maintains participation in such programs.
Assistive technologies, and in particular assistive social robots, are powerful tools to boost independence and improve participation.
The main objective of our project is to evaluate the effect of employing a social robot for helping obese people. The social robot TERESA will implement a TE assistant to enhance the social interactions between the patients and the carer and among the patients. More specifically, the goal of the project is to devise and validate a methodology and to measure to what extent a social robot can improve effectiveness in patient participation in programs for lifestyle change, by increasing motivation, commitment and fun and
reducing anxiety, negative moods, and embarrassment.
To achieve these objectives, we will use the methodology of the randomized clinical trial, comparing obese patients undergoing classical multidisciplinary therapeutic intervention including TE and a similar intervention in which the support of the TERESA social robot will also be employed.
