Socially Cooperative Behavior for Artificial Companions for Elderly and Cognitively Impaired People

We present work towards a spoken-dialogue embodied companion system that behaves in a socially cooperative fashion, i.e., being attentive to communicative and social cues emitted by the user, inferring internal cognitive, affective and interactional states, and reciprocating with appropriately adapted behavior. It is argued that this capability is vital for fostering cooperative, effortless, and enjoyable interactions that maximize both efficacy and long-term acceptance with elderly or cognitively impaired users.