Performance of daily activities by older adults with dementia: The role of an assistive robot

Older adults with cognitive impairment often have difficulties in remembering the proper sequence of activities of daily living (ADLs) or how to use the tools necessary to perform ADLs. They, therefore, require reminders in a timely fashion while performing ADLs. This is a very stressful situation for the caregivers of people with dementia. In this paper we describe a pilot study where a tele-operated assistive robot helps a group of older adults with dementia (OAwD) to perform an ADL, namely making a cup of tea in the kitchen. Five OAwD along with their caregivers participated in this study which took place in a simulated-home setting. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility and usability of a robotic system in assisting the OAwD to perform ADL in a home setting. The findings from this study will contribute to achieve our ultimate goal of designing a full-fledged assistive robot that assists OAwD aging in their own homes. The assistive robots designed for people with dementia mostly focus on companionship. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first attempt to design an assistive robot which will provide step-by-step guidance to people with dementia in their activities of daily living.

[1]  Ben J. A. Kröse,et al.  Assessing Acceptance of Assistive Social Agent Technology by Older Adults: the Almere Model , 2010, Int. J. Soc. Robotics.

[2]  M. Matarić,et al.  Cognitive Assistance and Physical Therapy for Dementia Patients , 2008 .

[3]  Scott R. Klemmer,et al.  How bodies matter: five themes for interaction design , 2006, DIS '06.

[4]  Martha E. Pollack,et al.  Autominder: an intelligent cognitive orthotic system for people with memory impairment , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[5]  Jennifer M. Kinney,et al.  Crossing the digital divide : family caregivers' acceptance of technology , 2002 .

[6]  Misha Pavel,et al.  Adaptive Interfaces for Home Health , 2003 .

[7]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  An overview of human interactive robots for psychological enrichment , 2004, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[8]  Sakuko Otake,et al.  Long term remote behavioral monitoring of elderly by using sensors installed in ordinary houses , 2002, 2nd Annual International IEEE-EMBS Special Topic Conference on Microtechnologies in Medicine and Biology. Proceedings (Cat. No.02EX578).

[9]  Mohamed Chetouani,et al.  Cognitive Services for Elderly People: The ROBADOM project , 2010 .

[10]  Rolf Dieter Schraft,et al.  Care-O-bot II—Development of a Next Generation Robotic Home Assistant , 2004, Auton. Robots.

[11]  A. Mihailidis,et al.  The COACH prompting system to assist older adults with dementia through handwashing: An efficacy study , 2008, BMC geriatrics.

[12]  Shwetak N. Patel,et al.  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs and the Adoption of Health-Related Technologies for Older Adults , 2012 .

[13]  Mohamed Chetouani,et al.  ROBADOM : An Assistive Robot for the Elderly with Mild Cognitive Impairment : System design and Users ’ Perspectives , 2012 .

[14]  G. Nejat,et al.  Promoting engagement in cognitively stimulating activities using an intelligent socially assistive robot , 2010, 2010 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics.

[15]  Alex Mihailidis,et al.  The design of intelligent in-home assistive technologies: Assessing the needs of older adults with dementia and their caregivers , 2011 .

[16]  Adriana Tapus,et al.  Music therapist robot for people suffering from dementia: Longitudinal study , 2009, Alzheimer's & Dementia.

[17]  Sebastian Thrun,et al.  A robotic walker that provides guidance , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[18]  Joelle Pineau,et al.  Towards robotic assistants in nursing homes: Challenges and results , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[19]  Itiro Siio,et al.  Peek-a-drawer: communication by furniture , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[20]  Christopher W. Geib,et al.  The Independent LifeStyle Assistant , 2004 .

[21]  M. Chetouani,et al.  ROBADOM: The Impact of a Domestic Robot on Psychological and Cognitive State of the Elderly with Mild Cognitive Impairment , 2011 .

[22]  M Chan,et al.  Alarm communication network to help carers of the elderly for safety purposes: a survey of a project. , 1999, International journal of rehabilitation research. Internationale Zeitschrift fur Rehabilitationsforschung. Revue internationale de recherches de readaptation.

[23]  Alex Mihailidis,et al.  Examining success of communication strategies used by formal caregivers assisting individuals with Alzheimer's disease during an activity of daily living. , 2012, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[24]  Alex Mihailidis,et al.  An intelligent emergency response system: preliminary development and testing of automated fall detection , 2005, Journal of telemedicine and telecare.