Motivating older adults to engage in cognitive activities has the potential to slow cognitive decline. This article presents a participatory design (PD) workshop and follow-up prototype evaluation to determine how cognitive training activities can be adapted to integrate socially assistive robots and sensory feedback (visual, auditory, and haptic, specifically). The workshop with older adults and therapists resulted in concrete designs and strategies for engagement. The second phase of this work was to implement these outcomes into a prototype that incorporated a humanoid robot and sensory feedback, with a particular focus on haptic feedback. The evaluation with eight older adults supported the potential of hand tracking with sensory feedback as an interaction mechanism to foster engagement, where the increased workload notably led to high levels of engagement. The prototype results confirmed the strategies and designs from the PD workshop were effective as a way of engaging older adults in cognitive activities. This article highlights the potential for the unique combination of socially assistive robots and sensory feedback to promote older adults’ engagement in cognitive activities.

Engaging in cognitive activities early and regularly has been shown to improve cognitive performance and delay the natural progression of cognitive decline for older adults. Many factors can make it difficult to achieve this, such as lack of engagement, highlighting the potential for technology to enhance engagement with cognitive activities. This paper investigates the unique combination of haptic feedback and a Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) during categorization-based activities. In this experiment, passive and active kinesthetic force feedback led to improvements in factors such as usability and affective state compared to non-contact cutaneous (ultrasonic) feedback. The robot facilitation positively impacted older adults’ performance and their perception of usability and interactivity compared to using a laptop. Some design considerations emerged including the themes of control and informativeness of haptic feedback and the proxemics of the robot. This work supports the combination of haptic feedback, specifically force feedback, along with a SAR to foster engagement with cognitive activities for older adults.

Cognitive training is effective at retaining cognitive function and delaying decline for typically ageing older adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and persons with dementia. Technological resources can address limiting factors that inhibit engagement and access to this treatment. We investigated how a socially assistive robot-facilitated memory task with sensory feedback was received by older adults. The impact of unimodal and multimodal administration of auditory and haptic feedback using two robot embodiments (Pepper and Nao) was evaluated in terms of user performance, usability, and workload. In contrast to sensory feedback research, auditory feedback resulted in significantly higher task accuracy. This was, however, supported by previous work from neurological literature. Auditory feedback also received significantly higher usability, and this preference was validated by qualitative feedback from participants. Regardless of robotic embodiment, this study demonstrates an advantage for auditory feedback (over haptic and multimodal) in cognitive training activities for older adults.