Self-disclosure of pain is essential to communicate pain, which is a subjective sensation, to a third party. However,many elderly people, especially those with chronic pain, are hesitant to communicate their pain. As a result, many patients do not receive appropriate treatment at the right time. It is
important to detect small discomfort in daily life and not overlook pain occurrence or changes. The ultimate goal of this study is to create a robot for people with chronic pain that notices the user ’s discomfort through many modalities in daily interactions, and tell the recorded information to a
hospital or family if necessary. In this study, we conducted fieldwork at Nichinan Hospital and based on the findings, we propose and verify the dialogue system that encourages selfdisclosure of pain. In this paper, we implemented a system that detects discomfort based on the user ’s utterance about pain and the action of rubbing, and asks detailed questions about the pain. We conducted a demonstration experiment with patients of Nichinan Hospital, and the content of the dialogue was evaluated by a physical therapist. The proposed method received significantly higher ratings for the naturalness of the conversation, the ease of use of the system, and the length of the conversation. The physical therapist’s evaluation suggested that the ability of the dialogue system to ”notice” the user ’s discomfort or unusualness had a positive effect on facilitating pain communication and encouraging self-disclosure. The results suggest that it is possible to realize a dialogue system that facilitates self-disclosure of pain by users who suffer from chronic pain.