Group's Core Theoretical Foundation

Dementia and Robots
In the paper, Is an Entertainment Robot Useful in the Care of Elderly People With Severe Dementia, researchers evaluated the effectiveness of a robot dog called AIBO in occupational therapy with demented patients and compared its effectiveness with a toy dog [1]. The usefulness of the robot AIBO and a toy dog was evaluated and compared. They found that both of them can trigger emotions and memories. Therefore, we can see that robots can have an impact on people with dementia.

PARO is an interactive robot designed in Japan with five types of sensors; light, tactile, posture, temperature, and audio. In the paper, Review of outcome measures in PARO robot intervention studies for dementia care, studies were conducted in various countries and performed in different settings, such as nursing homes, family homes, and day-care centers. Interactions with the PARO robot were individual or group, with a maximum of 15 participants. They demonstrated that interventions with PARO could be beneficial for improving QoL, positive affect, and social interaction, and reducing pain medication [2]. Also, this study found that PARO interactions for PwDs can reduce depression and anxiety. It provides strong evidence that interactions with robots have positive effects on PwDs. 

Activity
In this paper, Perspectives of People with Dementia About Meaningful Activities: A Synthesis, the authors studied the meanings of engagement in daily activities from the perspective of people with dementia [3]. In their study, they found that PwDs want to engage in personally meaningful activities that can connect with others.
Engagement in personally valued activities is an important aspect for older people. PwDs are often neglected from this. They often lack the opportunity to engage in activities they like, which can result from decreased cognitive abilities, behavioral symptoms, etc.
Therefore, we want to help PwDs to do those activities that they like in our design. Sometimes, PwDs want to engage in activities, but they cannot remember the steps due to decreased memory. Pepper can break down a complex activity into small steps so that PwDs can do it easily.

Music
In this paper, Designing a personal music assistant that enhances the social, cognitive, and affective experiences of people with dementia, the authors point out that music with a stronger personal meaning can enhance the social, cognitive experience of PwDs [4]. But we did not implement music personalization in our design because we focus more on the activity breakdown module. However, we did try to incorporate music in Pepper so that it can be more helpful and personal. Before each activity, Pepper would play a small piece of music to get the attention of the PwD.

TDP
Team Design Patterns is a general repeatable solution to a reoccurring problem in software design. In the paper, Team Design Patterns for Moral Decisions in Hybrid Intelligent Systems: A Case Study of Bias Mitigation, researchers pointed out that TDP language is suitable for the unambiguous description and communication of design problems and their solutions [5]. They showed that TDPs can be created and applied in the design process. Therefore, we designed our TDPs, including a general reminder design pattern and an activity breakdown design pattern.

[1] Tamura, T., Yonemitsu, S., Itoh, A., Oikawa, D., Kawakami, A., Higashi, Y., ... & Nakajima, K. (2004). Is an entertainment robot useful in the care of elderly people with severe dementia?. The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 59(1), M83-M85. https://sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1093/gerona/59.1.M83
[2] Kang, H. S., Makimoto, K., Konno, R., & Koh, I. S. (2020). Review of outcome measures in PARO robot intervention studies for dementia care. Geriatric Nursing, 41(3), 207-214. https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.gerinurse.2019.09.003
[3] Han, A., Radel, J., McDowd, J. M., & Sabata, D. (2016). Perspectives of people with dementia about meaningful activities: a synthesis. American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease & Other Dementias®, 31(2), 115-123. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1533317515598857
[4] Peeters, M. M., Harbers, M., & Neerincx, M. A. (2016). Designing a personal music assistant that enhances the social, cognitive, and affective experiences of people with dementia. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 727-737. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563216304319?casa_token=6AeK_ClUscYAAAAA:YFjAd3zvdl6ZlVaZIw5Vl9Fhxduc7FAE12mKyOxHde1w347lABJMVCAYM-Cl5hanRZgnStKi7I0
[5] van Stijn, J. J., Neerincx, M. A., ten Teije, A., & Vethman, S. (2021, April). Team design patterns for moral decisions in hybrid intelligent systems: A case study of bias mitigation. In 2021 AAAI Spring Symposium on Combining Machine Learning and Knowledge Engineering, AAAI-MAKE 2021 (pp. 1-12). CEUR-WS. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2846/paper15.pdf