Social Robots for the Care of Persons with Dementia: A Systematic Review

Intelligent assistive robots can enhance the quality of life of people with dementia and their caregivers. They can increase the independence of older adults, reduce tensions between a person with dementia and their caregiver, and increase social engagement. This article provides a review of assistive robots designed for and evaluated by persons with dementia. Assistive robots that only increased mobility or brain-computer interfaces were excluded. Google Scholar, IEEE Digital Library, PubMed, and ACM Digital Library were searched. A final set of 53 articles covering research in 16 different countries are reviewed. Assistive robots are categorized into five different applications and evaluated for their effectiveness, as well as the robots’ social and emotional capabilities. Our findings show that robots used in the context of therapy or for increasing engagement received the most attention in the literature, whereas the robots that assist by providing health guidance or help with an activity of daily living received relatively limited attention. PARO was the most commonly used robot in dementia care studies. The effectiveness of each assistive robot and the outcome of the studies are discussed, and particularly, the social/emotional capabilities of each assistive robot are summarized. Gaps in the research literature are identified and we provide directions for future work.