Robotic Entertainments as Personalizable Workflow of Services: a Home-Care Case Study

Socially Assistive Robotics is becoming a promising technology for home care support to patients affected by neurological disorders, such as dementia. Several requirements needs to be addressed when such technology has to be adopted in realistic scenarios both from an economic and an acceptance point of view. In this work we present the approach adopted in designing and implementing a prototype of an assistive robotic system composed of low cost and general purpose devices that can be easily deployed in the patient homes, to support them in performing cognitive and physical stimulation activities that are known to have a beneficial effect on the progression of the disease. In order to improve the acceptability level of an invasive technology as a robotic system, activities are represented in terms of workflow of services, where the delivery mode of each service is personalized for an individual patient classified considering the cognitive status, and the personality profile. The system is composed of different layers, with a middleware able to automatically select the services that are more suitable to the patient profile, and to schedule them according to the daily routine of the patient.