Social Robots for the Care of Persons with Dementia

Abstract

Intelligent assistive robots can enhance the quality of life of people with dementia and their caregivers. They can increase the independence of older adults, reduce tensions between a person with dementia and their caregiver, and increase social engagement. This article provides a review of assistive robots designed for and evaluated by persons with dementia. Assistive robots that only increased mobility or brain-computer interfaces were excluded. Google Scholar, IEEE Digital Library, PubMed, and ACM Digital Library were searched. A final set of 53 articles covering research in 16 different countries are reviewed. Assistive robots are categorized into five different applications and evaluated for their effectiveness, as well as the robots’ social and emotional capabilities. Our findings show that robots used in the context of therapy or for increasing engagement received the most attention in the literature, whereas the robots that assist by providing health guidance or help with an activity of daily living received relatively limited attention. PARO was the most commonly used robot in dementia care studies. The effectiveness of each assistive robot and the outcome of the studies are discussed, and particularly, the social/emotional capabilities of each assistive robot are summarized. Gaps in the research literature are identified and we provide directions for future work.

Use of a Social Robot (LOVOT) for Persons With Dementia: Exploratory Study

“…Abdi et al [ 6 ], in a scoping review on the use of SAR in care for older persons, identified several potential roles that the SAR could have—as affective therapy, cognitive training, social facilitator, companionship, and physiological therapy. Ghafurian et al [ 7 ] have emphasized the need for more robust research, in an international context, to fully assess the value of SAR in care for older persons. As social robots become more advanced, with artificial intelligence, there is a need for further, comprehensive testing of social robots within care for older persons and to develop a range of data collection techniques that can effectively assess the efficacy of social robots and identify the ethical issues connected with using social robots with persons living with dementia.…”

“…A review by Ghafurian et al [ 7 ] showed that social robots for the care of persons with dementia have received the most attention in the literature in the context of therapy or for increasing engagement, whereas robots designed for assisting with daily activities or providing health guidance received relatively limited attention. PARO was the most commonly used robot in dementia care studies [ 7 ]. A review of the use of PARO for persons with dementia has identified benefits such as improved mood, improved social engagement, and reduced negative emotions [ 8 ].…”

Personalized home-care support for the elderly: a field experience with a social robot at home

“…In the last decade, several projects have been funded and different robotics devices investigated to be used in elderly assistive settings. A recent systematic review on the use of social robots for the care of patients with dementia and their evaluation by caregivers is reported in (Ghafurian et al 2021). The review covered a range of robots with different levels of autonomy (e.g., from teleoperated robots that were fully controlled by another person to robots that were designed to work autonomously).…”

“…Finally, since the proposed robotic application was intended to be centered on the patient's needs and personal characteristics, no data were collected regarding the perception or the subjective evaluation of caregivers or family members. Caregivers' evaluations of robotic assistive care, as assessed in Ghafurian et al (2021), would have provided useful additional info.…”

“…Robotic systems deployment should not be dependent on specific hardware installations in environments with their specific characteristics and structural limitations, to adapt to different technological contexts. Secondly, to be widely accepted, users must experience the utility of the system and the easiness of use in interacting with the robot (Ghafurian et al 2021;Casey et al 2016;Koh et al 2021) while limiting the feeling of intrusiveness that the continuous use of monitoring devices may involve (Cavallo et al 2018). This requires the personalization of the robotic system interactions to each patient profile to increase its acceptance.…”