Promoting Engagement in Cognitively Stimulating Activities using an Intelligent Socially Assistive Robot

As the world's elderly population significantly increases, researchers are searching for ways to slow and prevent age-related diseases such as dementia. Currently, a growing body of research supports the effectiveness of using non-pharmacological interventions to reduce the decline of or improve brain functioning in people suffering from dementia. However, implementing and sustaining such interventions on a long-term basis is difficult as they require considerable resources and people, and can be very time-consuming for healthcare staff. Our research focuses on making these interventions more accessible to healthcare professionals through the aid of robotic assistants while validating their effectiveness. The objective of our work is to develop intelligent socially assistive robots as therapeutic aids designed to maintain, and even improve, the residual social and cognitive functioning in persons with dementia. In this paper, we study the social interaction attributes of our human-like socially assistive robot, Brian 2.0, during a person-centered cognitively stimulating activity to determine if the robot is able to engage a person in the activity by providing task assistance, encouragement, reinforcement, and celebration. Our preliminary proof-of-concept results show that the social interaction capabilities of Brian 2.0 are effective in engaging individuals in a cognitively stimulating game.