Using a Social Robot to Raise Women’s Awareness of Menstrual Health

We explore how a social robot can facilitate women’s discussions about menstruation, an important topic still taboo to many. Informed by interviews with the target group, we designed and implemented an interaction about menstruation with a social robot. In a pilotstudy (N = 7), we explored how participants perceived the interaction, and the role of robot non-verbal expressions in this context.

Take-away messages from this work:

Robots can use gaze and empathetic affirmations to put users at ease when discussing intimate and sensitive topics; The role of non-verbal expressions requires further investigation.