Towards Social Robots that Support Exercise Therapies for Persons with Dementia

Abstract

Exercise therapy for dementia care helps patients improve balance, muscle strength, endurance, flexibility, and posture. Usually, a therapist develops a physical training program to help patients retain their locomotor abilities, but in many cases, the challenge is to motivate and engage participants. To assist the therapist to engage participants we introduced the anthropomorphic social robot Kiro. Aiming to support the therapist along with a predefined routine, Kiro follows the instructions of the therapist to perform several exercises moving its arms and legs while motivating patients with personalized and motivational phrases. In this work, we report a preliminary user study consisting of two sessions with seven persons with dementia in which the robot successfully engaged with the patients and kept them motivated. Finally, we discuss the intervention design, adoption, and user interaction.