Creative social robots with evolutionary AI for personalized dementia therapy

(funded by the NWO Open Competition Domain Science - XS)

More than 50 million people worldwide suffer from dementia, a brain disease resulting in memory loss. Given the high costs and complexity of personalized care for dementia patients, social healthcare robots are increasingly being used. While recent research shows that creativity in therapeutic actions significantly improves symptoms of dementia, existing techniques that steer social robots rely on predefined and learned tasks, and lack creativity. With this project, we will develop a novel evolutionary artificial intelligence approach, combining fuzzy logic and genetic algorithm techniques, to design creative social robots that can be used in therapy for dementia patients.