A Social Robot to Assist in Addressing Disruptive Eating Behaviors by People with Dementia

Abstract

Socially assistive robots have been proposed to help people with dementia to conduct activities of daily living, facilitate therapeutic interventions or address problematic symptoms associated with the disease. Psychological symptoms of dementia, such as anxiety, apathy or aggression, are the main cause of distress to both people with dementia and caregivers. Caregivers frequently report disruptive eating behaviors as a major cause of concern. These include being distracted while eating, throwing food or refusing to eat. This paper reports the design and evaluation of a social robot aimed at assisting people with dementia with disruptive eating behaviors. We describe the user-centered design process that was followed and the implementation and evaluation of the assistive robot. The assistive robot identifies common challenging behaviors, using mostly computer vision, and incorporates strategies recommended by caregivers to help address them.