People with Alzheimer's disease and robots toward a discourse shift in social robotic : From companion robot to extension robot paradigm

International audienceRobotic services and therapies know a strong development and interest for older people and especially for people with dementia like Alzheimer diseases. According to studies, the use of robots shows benefits like reducing stress and foster communication and interactions. In this context robots are predetermined and used in a second step by users. This service design avoids sharing and collaborating with the end-users and creates a technical determinism. This one confines people in a passive position and generates negative effects. In contrast to this technical determinism this paper goes on to explore the use of mutual shaping of people and robots as a framework for social robot service design. Sharing and collaborating in a service design involve the active people's participation in the process from the beginning. To illustrate this process this paper describes a preliminary work aimed at setting a communication support for Alzheimer's disease using three humanoid robot NAO (SoftBank Robotics). The approche is based on master puppet concept: The subjects program the robots, and use them an an extension for communication. Twenty sessions are organized, alterning ten preparatory sessions and ten robotics programming sessions. During the preparatory sessions, the subject prepares the story: Voice recording, scenery creation, etc. During the robot programming session, the subjects program the motion to be realized to make the robot tell the story. The program is concluded by a public performance. The experiment involves six AD aged to 60-85. As first observations, a dynamic of the group a presence and action of everybody and very positive reactions are observed. The approach allows the subject to shift a passive position to an active one, and therefore helped them remaining human being