Much research in healthcare robotics explores ex- tending rehabilitative interventions to the home. However, for adults, little guidance exists on how to translate human-delivered, clinic-based interventions into robot-delivered, home-based ones to support longitudinal interaction. This is particularly problematic for neurorehabilitation, where adults with cognitive impairments require unique styles of interaction to avoid frustration or overstimulation. In this paper, we address this gap by exploring the design of robot-delivered neurorehabilitation interventions for people with mild cognitive impairment (PwMCI). Through a multi-year collaboration with clinical neuropsychologists and PwMCI, we developed robot prototypes which deliver cognitive training at home. We used these prototypes as design probes to understand how participants envision long-term deployment of the intervention, and how it can be contextualized to the lives of PwMCI. We report our findings and specify design patterns and considerations for translating neurorehabilitation interventions to robots. This work will serve as a basis for future endeavors to translate cognitive training and other clinical interventions onto a robot, support longitudinal engagement with home-deployed robots, and ultimately extend the accessibility of longitudinal health interventions for people with cognitive impairments.
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Get SMART: Collaborative Goal Setting with Cognitively Assistive Robots
Many robot-delivered health interventions aim to support people longitudinally at home to complement or replace in-clinic treat- ments. However, there is little guidance on how robots can support collaborative goal setting (CGS). CGS is the process in which a person works with a clinician to set and modify their goals for care; it can improve treatment adherence and efficacy. However, for home-deployed robots, clinicians will have limited availability to help set and modify goals over time, which necessitates that robots support CGS on their own. In this work, we explore how robots can facilitate CGS in the context of our robot CARMEN (Cognitively Assistive Robot for Motivation and Neurorehabilitation), which delivers neurorehabilitation to people with mild cognitive impairment (PwMCI). We co-designed robot behaviors for supporting CGS with clinical neuropsychologists and PwMCI, and prototyped them on CARMEN. We present feedback on how PwMCI envision these behaviors supporting goal progress and motivation during an intervention. We report insights on how to support this process with home-deployed robots and propose a framework to support HRI researchers interested in exploring this both in the context of cognitively assistive robots and beyond. This work supports design- ing and implementing CGS on robots, which will ultimately extend the efficacy of robot-delivered health interventions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1915734
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10441032
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’23),
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 44 - 53
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3568162.3576993
