Development of Behaviour Oriented Multimodal Interactive Pet Robot for Elderly Engagements

With a steady increase in the elderly population, people are realizing that the elderly needs can be addressed using technology. Socially assistive robots (SAR) can be used as an intervention tool for cognitive and dementia challenges. The value of SAR can be enhanced by incorporating multimodal functionality. If SARs can monitor elderly progress, then they could be used as an agent to notify abnormal behavior or drop in engaging activities. The multimodal interactive pet robot can augment well with the health practitioner and support them in the repetitive and rudimentary tasks. The activities can be geared and programmed towards an elderly level of interaction and can be changed should an improvement or learning occur. In this paper, we propose a multimodal pet robot that can monitor, promote cooperation and deepen collaboration in a social setting among the elderly through various human-robot interactions and interactive game activities.