Development of Scenario-Type Robot Recreation Program for the Elderly with Dementia and Its Evaluation

In Japan where the super-aging society is rapidly growing, we expect that the work burden of the care staff in a welfare facility for the elderly should be reduced, and robot-assisted recreation (RAR) has attracted attention. Therefore, in the current research, we propose a scenario-type robot recreation program as an initial research to systematize the implementing method of RAR. And we developed a scenario-type robot recreation program that was aimed at activating communication of the elderly with dementia. This program consisted of "ball game with robots," "contact with robots," "gymnastics with robots," and "sing with robots" activities. We also developed a system to operate the robot using a smart device. Therefore, even the care staff of a nursing home who do not have any specialized knowledge about robots could control these robots without any problems. Our experimental results demonstrated that the scenario-type robot recreation increased the level of participation of the elderly with dementia compared with the conventional non-scenario-type robot recreation. Furthermore, we confirmed the increase in the frequency of communication and the time for expressing positive emotions when the elderly with dementia participated in the scenario-type robot recreation.