The Application Potential of the Humanoid Socially Assistive Robot AMIGO for Motivation and Assessment in Dementia Care, First Krems Dementia Conference

Background: The increase in dementia causes an increase of the use of health care resources. At the same time there is a decreasing number of available caregivers. Consequently, technologies, like socially assistive robots, have been developed to assist caregivers and persons with dementia (PWD) in promoting independence. Most robots were tested in laboratory settings with mainly elderly people without dementia. Therefore, there is a lack of knowledge about their use in real care situations of persons with dementia, such as, the potential for motivating PWD to perform meaningful activities and furthermore to analyse the PWD’s mental state.

Methodology: The project AMIGO explores the experience of PWD, relatives, caregivers and dementia trainers in applying the humanoid socially assistive robot Pepper in private households. In Companion mode Pepper provides entertainment, reminders and tailored dialogues. In Coach mode it specifically motivates to use a tablet computer based, playful multimodal stimulation for intervention, by commenting, applauding and comforting during gameplay. In a first stage pilot study about the usability of the application, Pepper spent 1 week in each of 3 Austrian households. In total 12 participants (3 of each target group) were included to collect questionnaire and interview data.