Experiment Protocol for Human–Robot Interaction Studies with Seniors with Mild Cognitive Impairments

Abstract

While assistive robotics (AR) have shown promise in supporting seniors with daily life activities and psycho-social development, evaluation of AR systems presents novel challenges. From a technical point of view, reproducing HRI experiments has been problematic due to the lack of protocols, standardization and benchmarking tools, which ultimately impairs the evaluation of previous experiments. On the other hand, working with seniors with cognitive decline presents a major design challenge for researchers, since communication skills, state of mind and attention of participants are compromised. To address these challenges, this paper presents practical recommendations and a protocol for conducting HRI experiments with seniors with mild cognitive decline (MCI).