cARe: An Augmented Reality Support System for Dementia Patients

Symptoms of progressing dementia like memory loss, impaired executive function and decreasing motivation can gradually undermine instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) such as cooking. Assisting technologies in form of augmented reality (AR) have previously been applied to support cognitively impaired users during IADLs. In most cases, instructions were provided locally via projection or a head-mounted display (HMD) but lacked an incentive mechanism and the flexibility to support a broad range of use-cases. To provide users and therapists with a holistic solution, we propose cARe, a framework that can be easily adapted by therapists to various use-cases without any programming knowledge. Users are then guided through manual processes with localized visual and auditory cues that are rendered by an HMD. Our ongoing user study indicates that users are more comfortable and successful in cooking with cARe as compared to a printed recipe, which promises a more dignified and autonomous living for dementia patients.