AI-Powered Social Robot for Cognitive Stimulation in the Elderly Through Personalized Storytelling

Abstract

Aging has been increasing the demand for health-care services and caregivers in developed societies. Socially assistive robots are one of the technological tools that can be used to implement active and healthy aging practices which help mitigating the sustainability problem posed in care services. Sto-rytelling promotes entertainment as well as cognitive stimulation which is one of the dimensions of healthy aging. The use of social robots to tell stories can help to overcome limitations of conventional storytelling methodologies. This paper presents a storytelling system based on a social assistive robot endowed with natural language processing and lip expressions synchronized with speech, thus being capable of telling stories and interacting naturally with elderly people. The system uses generative AI to automatically create personalized stories tailored to the therapist's specifications and the user's unique characteristics. Through an interactive format, it narrates the story and allows the user to influence its direction by making choices at key moments. A pilot test with 15 elderly participants from a day center in Coimbra, Portugal, yielded positive results in terms of usability and acceptance.