Robot Cognitive Stimulation for the Elderly

In this paper, we present a new social intelligent robotic system used for cognitive stimulation therapy for individuals suffering from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and/or Alzheimer’s disease. Our work aims increasing the cognitive attention of users by playing different games and therefore help slow down cognitive decline. The system records the users’ task performance during the games and adapts the different levels of difficulty as a function of the users’ game history. The games were tailored to the needs of each individual so as to address their different cognitive disabilities. Two studies are presented.

[1]  D. Feil-Seifer,et al.  Defining socially assistive robotics , 2005, 9th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics, 2005. ICORR 2005..

[2]  Adriana Tapus,et al.  The role of physical embodiment of a therapist robot for individuals with cognitive impairments , 2009, RO-MAN 2009 - The 18th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

[3]  J. Morris,et al.  The diagnosis of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease: Recommendations from the National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer’s Association workgroups on diagnostic guidelines for Alzheimer's disease , 2011, Alzheimer's & Dementia.

[4]  A. A. Clair,et al.  The Effects of Music Therapy on Interactions Between Family Caregivers and Their Care Receivers with Late Stage Dementia , 1997 .

[5]  Nick C. Fox,et al.  The diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease: Recommendations from the National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer's Association workgroup , 2011 .

[6]  A. Libin,et al.  Therapeutic robocat for nursing home residents with dementia: Preliminary inquiry , 2004, American journal of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

[7]  Adriana Tapus,et al.  A model for synthesizing a combined verbal and nonverbal behavior based on personality traits in human-robot interaction , 2013, 2013 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[8]  Maja J. Mataric,et al.  Using Socially Assistive Human–Robot Interaction to Motivate Physical Exercise for Older Adults , 2012, Proceedings of the IEEE.

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

[10]  Cory D. Kidd,et al.  A sociable robot to encourage social interaction among the elderly , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[11]  H. Eysenck The structure of human personality , 1953 .

[12]  Adriana Tapus,et al.  User—robot personality matching and assistive robot behavior adaptation for post-stroke rehabilitation therapy , 2008, Intell. Serv. Robotics.

[13]  M. Matarić,et al.  The use of socially assistive robots in the design of intelligent cognitive therapies for people with dementia , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics.

[14]  Clifford Nass,et al.  Consistency of personality in interactive characters: verbal cues, non-verbal cues, and user characteristics , 2000, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[15]  Mohamed Chetouani,et al.  Voice and graphical -based interfaces for interaction with a robot dedicated to elderly and people with cognitive disorders , 2010, 19th International Symposium in Robot and Human Interactive Communication.