Strategies to Facilitate the Acceptance of a Social Robot by People with Dementia

Abstract

Before determining if an interaction with a social robot benefits the person with dementia (PwD), it is necessary to understand the process of acceptance of the robot by the PwD. Hence, we proposed strategies to facilitate the acceptance by PwD in real environments. We enforced these strategies in a conversational robot - called Eva, and conducted a five-week study with six PwD to analyze the impact of the strategies in the acceptance. Our preliminary results suggest that add a pleasure component such as music to the interaction improve the interaction and could enact a better bonding. Moreover, a facilitator promotes the interaction between PwD and robot, but gradually the participation of the facilitator decrease to become a direct PwD-robot interaction.