Conversational Affective Social Robots for Ageing and Dementia Support

Abstract

Socially assistive robots (SAR) hold significant potential to assist older adults and people with dementia in human engagement and clinical contexts by supporting mental health and independence at home. While SAR research has recently experienced prolific growth, long-term trust, clinical translation and patient benefit remain immature. Affective human-robot interactions are unresolved and the deployment of robots with conversational abilities is fundamental for robustness and humanrobot engagement. In this paper, we review the state of the art within the past two decades, design trends, and current applications of conversational affective SAR for ageing and dementia support. A horizon scanning of AI voice technology for healthcare, including ubiquitous smart speakers, is further introduced to address current gaps inhibiting home use. We discuss the role of user-centred approaches in the design of voice systems, including the capacity to handle communication breakdowns for effective use by target populations. We summarise the state of development in interactions using speech and natural language processing, which forms a baseline for longitudinal health monitoring and cognitive assessment. Drawing from this foundation, we identify open challenges and propose future directions to advance conversational affective social robots for: 1) user engagement, 2) deployment in real-world settings, and 3) clinical translation.

Empowering Well-Being Through Conversational Coaching for Active and Healthy Ageing

“…There has been increasing interest in recent years in exploring how new developments in conversational AI and socially assistive robots can be applied to support active and healthy ageing. [3] presents a comprehensive state-of-the-art review in which several future research directions are identified, including: the need for unconstrained natural language processing and conversational strategies to enable robust and meaningful twoway conversations; the ability to interpret affective modalities in order to enhance user engagement and trust; and challenges in deployment of ensuring user adherence and data privacy. Looking at some individual relevant projects, [4] reports a month-long study of a virtual agent and robot that could interact with older adults in their homes through dialogue and gestures with the aim of providing companionship and reducing isolation.…”

“…The complete e-VITA platform is based on the Digital Enabler platform provided by the project partner Engineering (Italy) 3 . The platform is designed to include multiple devices and software components from across Europe and Japan that are based on different technologies and standards.…”

The Supportive Smart Home System: Implications and Solutions for Service Providers

“…[6]- [15]. Research has also considered cloud processing in such systems that could provide support back to the individual or supply their family and caregivers with information related to well-being, thus providing more advanced functions and services to support aging-in-place [14], [16], [26]- [28]. Many research projects have explored such possibilities where some projects focused on (1) daily cognitive evaluations through homebased sensing [6], [11], [15], [29], (2) detection of overnight wandering in Dementia patients using a multi-sensor system [8]- [10], (3) the challenges accompanied by cloud processing and data analytics in smart home systems [16], [26], [27], (4) the security and reliability aspects of smart home systems [14], (5) real-time location tracking in indoor environments using Wi-Fi and a wearable sensor [30], (6) monitoring of user activity and rate of activity using RF-ID technology [31], (7) deployment of in-home robots to provide human-level social engagement and support for elderly with dementia [28], and (8) determining electrodermal activity as means for emotion-sensing using a wearable Printed Circuit Board (PCB) [32].…”

“…An integral part of supportive smart home systems is cloud processing. It could provide real-time support and feedback to individuals and their families by deploying algorithms in the cloud that analyze data (sensor measurements) sent from a supportive smart home system in real-time [5], [8], [9], [15], [28], [33]- [37]. In addition, cloud-recorded data can be used to perform analytics to determine an individual's overall health and well-being.…”

“…(2) Deployment of in-home robots to provide human-level social engagement and support for elderly with dementia [28].…”