Every 3 seconds, someone develops dementia worldwide. Brain-training exercises, preferably involving also physical activity, have shown their potential to monitor and improve the brain function of people affected by Alzheimer disease (AD) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This paper presents a cognitive robotic system designed to assist mild dementia patients during brain-training sessions of sorting tokens, an exercise inspired by the Syndrom KurzTest neuropsychological test (SKT). The system is able to perceive, learn and adapt to the user’s behaviour and is composed of two main modules. The adaptive module based on representing the human-robot interaction as a planning problem, that can adapt to the user performance offering different encouragement and recommendation actions using both verbal and gesture communication in order to minimize the time spent to solve the exercise. As safety is a very important issue, the cognitive system is enriched with a safety module that monitors the possibility of physical contact and reacts accordingly. The cognitive system is presented as well as its embodiment in a real robot. Simulated experiments are performed to (i) evaluate the adaptability of the system to different patient use-cases and (ii) validate the coherence of the proposed safety module. A real experiment in the lab, with able users, is used as preliminary evaluation to validate the overall approach. Results in laboratory conditions show that the two presented modules effectively provide additional and essential functionalities to the system, although further work is necessary to guarantee robustness and timely response of the robot before testing it with patients.

中文翻译：

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基于人机交互的脑力训练认知系统框架

每3秒钟，全球就会有人患上痴呆症。脑部训练，最好还包括体育锻炼，已经显示出监测和改善受阿尔茨海默氏病（AD）或轻度认知障碍（MCI）影响的人的脑功能的潜力。本文提出了一种认知机器人系统，旨在在轻度痴呆患者分类标记的脑训练期间协助他们，是受Syndrom KurzTest神经心理测验（SKT）启发的一项练习。该系统能够感知，学习并适应用户的行为，并且由两个主要模块组成。自适应模块基于将人机交互表示为计划问题，该模块可以适应用户的表现，同时通过口头和手势交流提供不同的鼓励和推荐动作，以最大程度地减少解决练习所需的时间。由于安全性是一个非常重要的问题，因此认知系统充斥着安全模块，该模块监视身体接触的可能性并做出相应的反应。在真实的机器人中展示了认知系统及其实施方式。进行模拟实验以（i）评估系统对不同患者用例的适应性，以及（ii）验证所提议安全模块的一致性。实验室中有能力的用户进行的真实实验将用作初步评估，以验证总体方法。实验室条件下的结果表明，尽管需要进行进一步的工作以确保机器人的坚固性和及时响应，然后再与患者进行测试，但两个提出的模块有效地为系统提供了其他基本功能。