The robot course: an investigation of how large, inflatable, soft robots can be used for therapy.

When it comes to therapy, talking is often ineffective when people shut down, zone out, become upset, disruptive, or chaotic. This is particularly the case for young people, individuals who experience severe anxiety or have history of emotional abuse. A unique program, the HorseCourse, has emerged in Dorset to address this. The HorseCourse helps people to become calm and focused by learning to communicate with specially trained horses from the ground. The programs train people to recognize and manage emotions causing them to become disengaged, chaotic, shut down or aggressive. TheHorseCourse is a revolutionary approach to mental health/self-regulation with excellent impact evidence [https://www.thehorsecourse.org/images/pdfs/TheHorseCourse_Evidence_Summary.pdf]. However, training with real horses, although it being highly successful, presents some challenge to scaling the approach. The goal of this project is to investigate the use of animal robots to reproduce the benefits of the HorseCourse. The project resonates particularly well with a new type of robot, large inflatable ones, which start to be investigated in multiple places in the world for their benefit to user interaction. A current collaboration with AirGiant, a local company, building inflatable giant, has demonstrated that the robot has a unique affordance (being soft, large, and squishy) which can be exploited to create original interaction with humans.

The key research question for this project is to investigate if this is possible to reproduce the benefits of the HorseCourse through an inflatable robot. To address this a number of sub-objectives can be tackled: 1) a systematic review of what factors have been investigated in animal therapy, as well as how the field of robotic has explore this question before; 2) a series of user evaluations to better understand the factors at play in the HorseCourse program; 3) the development and implementation of a soft robot which implement the observations seen in previous steps; 4) an evaluation of the final robot design with end-users.

Impact on Health and Care
The CDT primarily addresses the most pressing needs of nations such as the UK - namely the growth of expenditure on long term health conditions. These conditions (e.g. diabetes, depression, arthritis) cost the NHS over £70Bn a year (~70% of its budget). As our populations continue to age these illnesses threaten the nation's health and its finances.

Digital technologies transforming our world - from transport to relationships, from entertainment to finance - and there is consensus that digital solutions will have a huge role to play in health and care. Through the CDT's emphasis on multidisciplinarity, teamwork, design and responsible innovation, it will produce future leaders positioned to seize that opportunity.

Impact on the Economy
The UK has Europe's 2nd largest medical technology industry and a hugely strong track record in health, technology and societal research. It is very well-placed to develop digital health and care solutions that meet the needs of society through the creation of new businesses.

Achieving economic impact is more than a matter of technology. The CDT has therefore been designed to ensure that its graduates are team players with deep understanding of health and social care systems, good design and the social context within which a new technology is introduced.

Many multinationals have been keen to engage the CDT (e.g. Microsoft, AstraZeneca, Lilly, Biogen, Arm, Huawei ) and part of the Director's role will be to position the UK as a destination for inwards investment in Digital Health. CDT partners collectively employ nearly 1,000,000 people worldwide and are easily in a position to create thousands of jobs in the UK.

The connection to CDT research will strongly benefit UK enterprises such as System C and Babylon, along with smaller companies such as Ayuda Heuristics and Evolyst.

Impact on the Public
When new technologies are proposed to collect and analyse highly personal health data, and are potentially involved in life or death decisions, it is vital that the public are given a voice. The team's experience is that listening to the public makes research better, however involving a full spectrum of the community in research also has benefits to those communities; it can be empowering, it can support the personal development of individuals within communities who may have little awareness of higher education and it can catalyse community groups to come together around key health and care issues.

Policy Makers
From the team's conversations with the senior leadership of the NHS, local leaders of health and social care transformation (see letters from NHS and Bristol City Council) and national reports, it is very apparent that digital solutions are seen as vital to the delivery of health and care. The research of the CDT can inform policy makers about the likely impact of new technology on future services.

Partner organisation Care & Repair will disseminate research findings around independent living and have a track record of translating academic research into changes in practice and policy.

Carers UK represent the role of informal carers, such as family members, in health and social care. They have a strong voice in policy development in the UK and are well-placed to disseminate the CDTs research to policy makers.

STEM Education
It has been shown that outreach for school age children around STEM topics can improve engagement in STEM topics at school. However female entry into STEM at University level remains dramatically lower than males; the reverse being true for health and life sciences. The CDT outreach leverages this fact to focus STEM outreach activities on digital health and care, which can encourage young women into computer science and impact on the next generation of women in higher education.

For academic impact see "Academic Beneficiaries" section.