A Social Robot Assisting in Cognitive

Stimulation Therapy

Esther Salichs(B) , Enrique Fernández-Rodicio, José Carlos Castillo,

Álvaro Castro-González, Mar´ıa Malfaz, and Miguel Ángel Salichs

Department of Systems Engineering and Automation,

University Carlos III of Madrid, Getafe, Spain
{esalichs,enrifern,jocastil,acgonzal,mmalfaz,salichs}@ing.uc3m.es

Abstract. In recent years, the demand for caregivers and therapists has
raised together with the life expectancy. Elder people demand adapted
environments and specialized care that allows for an active ageing. In
order to assist in their daily tasks, social robots appear as a comple-
ment to caregivers. In this demo we introduce a robot capable to conduct
cognitive stimulation sessions, complementing the therapists or even con-
ducting the sessions autonomously. This robot has been designed to work
both at home and daycare facilities.

Keywords: Cognitive stimulation therapy · Social robot

Human-robot interaction

1 Introduction
Nowadays, there are a number of elders in need of personal assistance and care.
In these cases, the presence of caregivers plays an essential role to improve their
life quality. But for the caregivers, being responsible for another person 24/7
becomes in some cases a stressful task, both physically and emotionally. Robots
can also help to mitigate this situation, taking care of the patient well-being and
reducing the workload of the caregiver.
More specifically, social robots have been employed in the task of assisting
elders and people with cognitive impairment. There are examples such as Paro
[1], a baby harp seal robot designed to reduce the levels of stress in patients,
to encourage them to socialize, and to improve their motivation. Other rele-
vant examples are Kompai [2] and Care-O-Bot [3], both designed to serve as a
pseudo-caregivers, assisting elders in their home chores. Although many works
have shown how robots can improve patients’ daily life, none of them aims to
also assist caregivers in their job. For this purpose, we have developed the social
robot Mini [4], a plush-like desktop robot designed to be appealing and create
emotional bonds with the users. Although it can be applied in several scenar-
ios (e.g. safety, entertainment or personal assistance, for example), this work
presents how Mini is capable of conducting cognitive stimulation exercises.
⃝c Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
Y. Demazeau et al. (Eds.): PAAMS 2018, LNAI 10978, pp. 344–347, 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94580-4_35
 A Social Robot Assisting in Cognitive Stimulation Therapy 345

2 Main Purpose
Traditionally, the care of elders and people with special needs has been trusted
to human caregivers although, nowadays, technology is proposing solutions to
assist in these tasks. This is the case of cognitive stimulation, where different
applications have been designed to assist the caregiver during the stimulation
sessions. Among the advantages of incorporating technologic aids to stimulation,
we can find the automatic assessment of the user’s state along the exercises. Nev-
ertheless, these therapies tend to be monotonous and lack the positive aspects
of therapy related to human-to-human interaction. In this sense, robots appear
as a solution to these issues providing multimodal interaction, which makes the
communication more natural for the users. In contrast to simple computer appli-
cations, robots can also interact with the environment, allowing for a range of
exercises that involve using physical objects.
One of the limitations of robotic therapies is that these robots lack autonomy,
with a therapist or caregiver controlling the evolution of the exercises. In our
case, we proposed an autonomous solution in which a social robot could be able
to conduct a stimulation session with exercises previously defined by experts.
Our goal is to communicate with the elders, addressing the specific challenges
arising from the interaction with people with cognitive problems as well as other
limitations such as hearing, speech or vision issues.

3 Demonstration

This section provides some insights about the different capabilities that will be
shown in the demo. It is also important to describe the multimodal interaction
capabilities that our robot can use to interact with people, taking into account
some limitations that people with cognitive impairment may present. Interac-
tions have been designed to be one-to-one, with the user sitting in front of the
robot as seen in Fig. 1(a).

3.1 Multimodal Interaction

The robot Mini was designed to handle multimodal communication, in order to

interact with users in a natural way (see Fig. 1(b)). The robot is covered with a
soft material in order to give it a friendly appearance. Regarding the inputs, our
robot is equipped with a microphone for speech-based communication, touch
sensors in the shoulders and belly that allow the user to interact physically
with Mini, an RGB-D camera to extract visual and depth information from
the environment, and a tablet that can work both as an input device (through
menus) and an output device, displaying photos, videos, music and other external
applications.
Mini can also move and perform expressive gestures as it has five degrees of
freedom (two in its head, one in each arm and one in the base). Additionally, Mini
is equipped with a pair of speakers that output the robot’s voice, and multiple
346 E. Salichs et al.

Fig. 1. (a)Mini elements. (b)Elder interacting with Mini during a cognitive stimulation
session

RGB LEDs on the mouth, cheeks and heart. These LEDs are mainly used to
transmit liveliness, although they can also be used to communicate information
to the user during the exercises. Finally, Mini’s eyes are two uOLED screens
that display different GIFs, allowing the robot to look in different directions and
change the expression in order to transmit different moods.

3.2 Demonstrating the Robot Capabilities

This demo presents the different capabilities and exercises that have been
designed in cognitive stimulation sessions. These cover almost all the main cogni-
tive functions, which are the basis for the psycho-stimulation methods tradition-
ally used by therapists and can be classified into seven categories: (i) Temporal
orientation, where the robot asks the user about the current date, season, month,
etc.; (ii) Attention, where the user has to react as quickly as possible, interact-
ing with the screen or the touch sensors, depending on the robot requests; (iii)
Gnosis or perception, recognizing and identifying different types of auditory and
visual stimulus; (iv) Memory, including both short-term memory (e.g. remember
a list of words), and semantic memory (e.g. general knowledge); (v) Executive
functions with exercises involving processes related to planning, reasoning, inhi-
bition, decision making, etc.; (vi) Calculus, which includes simple calculations,
such as counting coins or making simple mathematical operations; And (vii) lan-
guage, where users have to find words related to a category, complete a saying
or find the proposed word with missing letters.
The process to execute the demo is as follows: (i) The robot starts asleep,
so the user has to wake it up touching the shoulders or belly; (ii) The robot
ask the user what he want to do, and he has to answer by voice. Apart of the
psycho-stimulation exercises, the robot has the possibility of introducing itself
and to present some of its capabilities. If the user does not want to interact
with the robot, it will go back to the sleeping state. When the robot finish the
demanded task, it comes back to this step and repeat again what the user wants
 A Social Robot Assisting in Cognitive Stimulation Therapy 347

to do. (iii) If the user selects the psycho-stimulation option, the robot asks him
if he wants to execute a session or to test a specific exercise. In the case of an
exercise, firstly he has to select the cognitive function category, then the exercise
to be performed and finally, the level of difficulty; And (iv) when the exercise
or the session has finished, the robot repeats the step three. If the user does not
want to continue with the cognitive stimulation, then the robot returns to the
step two.

4 Conclusions

This demonstration presents a cognitive stimulation session conducted by a robot

to help elders with cognitive impairment. This session consists of a series of exer-
cises where the robot asks the user to complete different tasks, and analyses the
response obtained from the patient, being also in charge of making appropriate
decisions based on the information extracted from the environment in order to
advance in the session. Our robot is designed to work alongside a caregiver and
can manage multimodal interaction in order to make communication as natural
as possible for the user.

Acknowledgments. The research leading to these results has received funding from
the projects: Development of social robots to help seniors with cognitive impair-
ment (ROBSEN), funded by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad; and
RoboCity2030-III-CM, funded by Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural
Funds of the EU.

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