67The Impact of a Companion Robot in Combatting Loneliness in People with Dementia Living in Residential Care. The MARIO Project

Abstract

Background: MARIO, a European Horizon 2020 funded project, developed a companion robot for people with dementia to enhance their social connectedness and engagement and thereby reduce their loneliness and isolation. An iterative process was employed and people with dementia were involved at each phase of development of the robot and helped to guide the appearance of MARIO and the creation of a number of different apps including-My Music, My Games, My Memories. Participants with dementia could interact with MARIO to access these apps via touchscreen and or voice commands. This paper presents the finding from the Irish pilot. Methods: The development and testing took place between September 2016 and August 2017 after this a two month evaluation phase took place where no new functionalities were added. A descriptive qualitative approach based on the work of Thorne et al., (2004) was used to capture the impact of MARIO on loneliness. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from relatives (n = 6); carers (n = 8); managers (n = 5) and people with dementia (n = 10), using interview guides developed from the literature and expertise of the researchers. Directed qualitative content analysis based on the work of Hsieh and Shannon (2005), was used to analyse the data. Ethical approval was obtained from the University ethics committee. Results: The data revealed five themes -perceptions/attitudes towards MARIO; challenges when using of social robots; impact of MARIO; utilisation of the MARIO applications; and making MARIO better. Most participants were accepting and had positive perceptions/attitude toward MARIO, and the deployment of social robots.