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Social Robots for Older Adults with Dementia: A Narrative Review on Challenges & Future Directions

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13086))

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Abstract

Worldwide, approximately 50 million people live with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias and there are nearly 10 million new cases every year. Social robots have been a promising approach to supplement human caregivers in dementia care. In this narrative review, we reviewed 62 articles to gain insight into the attitudes and perceptions among people with dementia and other stakeholders worldwide towards using social robots to assist dementia care. Then, we discussed some critical factors and challenges found in these studies influencing people’s perceptions as well as future directions in this field. The primary influencing challenges include cultural factors, users’ limited experiences with technologies, methodological challenges underlying qualitative studies as well as technological malfunctions in current robot system. We further suggested several aspects to be taken into more consideration in future research, including collaborations with other stakeholders, design of individual or group use for dementia care, an adaptive level of autonomy in a social robot and long-term human-robot interaction.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA

    Daniel Woods, Fengpei Yuan & Xiaopeng Zhao

  2. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Ying-Ling Jao

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  1. Daniel Woods
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  2. Fengpei Yuan
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  3. Ying-Ling Jao
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  4. Xiaopeng Zhao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fengpei Yuan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Engineering, Singapore, Singapore

    Haizhou Li

  2. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

  3. A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore, Singapore

    Yan Wu

  4. Center for Human Technologies, Istituto Italiano Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Agnieszka Wykowska

  5. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

    Xiaorui Liu

  7. School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University, Beijing, Beijing, China

    Dongyu Li

  8. Social Cognition Human-Robot Interaction, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Jairo Perez-Osorio

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Woods, D., Yuan, F., Jao, YL., Zhao, X. (2021). Social Robots for Older Adults with Dementia: A Narrative Review on Challenges & Future Directions. In: Li, H., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13086. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90525-5_35

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