Empowering Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) with Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) and Emotion Recognition

Identifier:  TDX:2812

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2812

Authors:  Shukla, Jainendra

Abstract:
Robot-assisted systems for cognitive rehabilitation can increase the reach of potential benefits of evidence-based psychological or psychosocial interventions to the individuals with a wide range of mental health concerns. Existing researches in socially assistive robots (SAR) lack clinical validation and hence, medical practitioners have little motivation for their use in clinical practices. Besides, existing human-robot interactions are inattentive to the user’s current emotional state and engagement. Cognitive rehabilitation interventions for individuals with mental health concerns demand complex human robot interaction, and ubiquity of wearable devices motivates for robot interaction systems which can autonomously acquire information about the user’s emotional state, intentions and surrounding context so the robot can adapt its interactions accordingly. In this thesis, I have described the design, implementation of robot-assisted cognitive rehabilitation activities and real-time emotion recognition from electro-dermal activity (EDA) signals. Design of robot-assisted interventions presents a coherent framework to produce positive effects on both the users and the caregivers. The implementation of the system confirms an increased engagement among users and a significant reduction in caregivers burden. The development of the emotion recognition algorithms has shown that it is possible to process the EDA signals in real time with minimal lag to infer the emotional state of individuals with intellectual disability (ID).