A Systematic Review of Robotic Rehabilitation for Cognitive Training

Abstract

A large and increasing number of people around the world experience cognitive disability. Rehabilitation robotics has provided promising training and assistance approaches to mitigate cognitive deficits. In this article, we carried out a systematic review on recent developments in robot-assisted cognitive training. We included 99 articles in this work and described their applications, enabling technologies, experiments, and products. We also conducted a meta analysis on the articles that evaluated robot-assisted cognitive training protocol with primary end users (i.e., people with cognitive disability). We identified major limitations in current robotics rehabilitation for cognitive training, including the small sample size, non-standard measurement of training and uncontrollable factors. There are still multifaceted challenges in this field, including ethical issues, user-centered (or stakeholder-centered) design, the reliability, trust, and cost-effectiveness, personalization of the robot-assisted cognitive training system. Future research shall also take into consideration human-robot collaboration and social cognition to facilitate a natural human-robot interaction.

The Role of Socially Assistive Robots in the Care of Older People: To Assist in Cognitive Training, to Remind or to Accompany?

“…These robots could provide cognitive training and other psychosocial interventions that complete the work of caregivers and therapists [100]. Our results support the idea of user-driven, rather than technology-driven, robot design and development [101], with involvement of end-users (older people) and other stakeholders (formal and informal caregivers, therapists) [46,101]. The results of our research into the acceptance of psychosocial interventions provided by socially assistive robots may be useful in the design process of robots for the care of seniors, who are often considered a population that requires a custom-tailored integration of robots.…”

“…A study by Peca et al [45] on human-robot interaction showed that a semi-autonomous robot is a better solution than a fully autonomous one for vulnerable populations such as people with cognitive deficits. According to Orejana et al, in order to improve a user's cognitive function, the robot should take into consideration the user's situation and develop good collaboration to engage the user in long-term training [38,46].…”

“…Cognitive training consists of cognition-based interventions designed to provide structured practice in performing tasks connected with aspects of cognitive functioning, such as memory, attention, language or executive functions [50]. It also improves social communication skills [46]. According to Kim et al [51], conducting cognitive training using robots has greater effects than training carried out in the traditional way, using paper and pencil.…”

“…Older people taking part in such training have been reported to have a lesser decline in the ability to perform daily activities, allowing them to remain largely independent in their own homes [64,65]. Physically embodied robots represent a promising technology that could be used in the future as accessible, effective tools for conducting cognitive training [46].…”

A Systematic Review of Research on Robot-Assisted Therapy for Children with Autism

“…Most importantly, diagnosing a person with ASD is difficult, and the process differs from one therapist to another. The medical center might also affect treatment and have high costs [ 2 , 3 , 4 ].…”