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One useful approach for mentally helping patients is art therapy, which has demonstrated some good effects with a wide range of groups, as follows. There is a large and rising need to help people mentally: for example, loneliness, which has been tied also to dementia, has been described as a “rising epidemic” that can be a higher mortality risk than moderate daily smoking or obesity when prolonged, and is estimated to cost hundreds of billions of dollars yearly in the US alone. Additionally, for “robot” here, we primarily consider (semi-)autonomous machines, comprising computers, sensors and actuators, with some degree of human-like intelligence and capabilities that can be used for therapy.
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“Creativity” is another core aspect of art therapy, which is “a way of doing things”, characterized by some relative novelty, as described in Appendix B. “Emotion” in humans refers to a complex psycho-physical phenomenon at the heart of art therapy, involving subjective feelings, somatic symptoms such as elevated heart rate, affect displays such as smiling, and cognitive appraisals we suggest that some interesting properties of emotions to consider for art therapy include co-occurrence, referents, timing, and polysemy (that emotions often co-occur, that emotions usually refer to some referent which can be someone or something, that emotions play out over time, and that emotion displays can express different emotions), as described in Appendix A. “Art”, which has been described as washing “away from the soul the dust of everyday life”, can include painting, drawing, photography, collage, and sculpture, and be abstract or symbolic, where we use the term “symbol” here in its general sense as some meaningful stimulus pattern, thereby comprising icons and indices. “Therapy” here encompasses notions of care, healing, and providing attention and is intended to mitigate problems and facilitate positive health and well-being, where “well-being” here is used synonymously with “happiness”, “quality of life”, and “life-satisfaction”. “Art therapy” is a therapeutic process involving art-making: a patient expresses emotions through creating art, which also serves as a bridge between the patient and a therapist. Based on our arguments, we propose a design for an art therapy robot, also discussing a simplified prototype implementation, toward informing future work in the area. In doing so, we also suggest the usefulness of the responsive art approach as a starting point for art therapy robots, describe a perceived gap between our understanding of emotions in human science and what is currently typically being addressed in engineering studies, and identify some potential ethical pitfalls and solutions for avoiding them. To gain insight, we review some of the literature on robots used for therapy and art, potential strategies for interacting, and mechanisms for expressing emotions and creativity. A challenge is that the theoretical foundations are highly complex we are only just beginning ourselves to understand emotions and creativity in human science, which have been described as highly important challenges in artificial intelligence. Here, we focus on the latter case, on an autonomous robot capable of painting with a person. To address increasing incidences of psychological and emotional difficulties such as loneliness, and a shortage of human healthcare workers, we believe that robots will also play a useful role in engaging with people in therapy, on an emotional and creative level, e.g., in music, drama, playing, and art therapy. Social robots are being designed to help support people’s well-being in domestic and public environments.