  Social robots are becoming an integrated part of our daily life due to their
ability to provide companionship and entertainment. A subfield of robotics,
Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR), is particularly suitable for expanding these
benefits into the healthcare setting because of its unique ability to provide
cognitive, social, and emotional support. This paper presents our recent
research on developing SAR by evaluating the ability of a life-like
conversational social robot, called Ryan, to administer internet-delivered
cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) to older adults with depression. For Ryan
to administer the therapy, we developed a dialogue-management system, called
Program-R. Using an accredited CBT manual for the treatment of depression, we
created seven hour-long iCBT dialogues and integrated them into Program-R using
Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML). To assess the effectiveness of
Robot-based iCBT and users' likability of our approach, we conducted an HRI
study with a cohort of elderly people with mild-to-moderate depression over a
period of four weeks. Quantitative analyses of participant's spoken responses
(e.g. word count and sentiment analysis), face-scale mood scores, and exit
surveys, strongly support the notion robot-based iCBT is a viable alternative
to traditional human-delivered therapy.
