Social Robot

<Describe the selection of the social robot you intend to use. The description includes the reasons for this selection and the characteristics of this specific robot..>

Navel

Navel is an AI enabled social robot. He is able to address each patient individually by remembering their names and previous conversations, and engage in various novel conversations because of its use of current AI technologies. While its built-in connection to AI aligns with some of our goals involved in the conversational aspects of the matching game, this functionality can be extended to any social robot in a more specified way as long as it has a microphone and speaker.

Miro-E

Miro is a small, cute animal-like social robot. It is designed to behave with animal qualities, and is able to react to various stimuli like sound and motion. For our purposes as a guide and conversational partner, Miro's more pet-like attributes make it less suitable than the alternatives.

Nao

NAO is a small humanoid robot that is built for interacting with people. It is able to talk, recognize faces, move around and gesture which makes it more engaging. That said, similar to Navel and that for our purpose we do not require locomotive functionality, we decided to skip it to reduce the complexity that needs to be considered.

Pepper

We want to use Pepper because it has a built-in screen where people with dementia can play the memory game on easily. This makes things easier as well, since we only need one device to upload personal memories and the related context into the game. Pepper can then use this information to interact with the clients in a engaging and personal way. In addition to the screen, Pepper can talk and ask questions since it has speakers, which helps make the interaction more natural.