IBM Cloud Services Enhance Automatic Cognitive Assessment via Human-Robot Interaction

Thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence and social robotics, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) can be used as a non-invasive screening tool for the assessment of cognitive decline. In this scenario, the robot manages the assessment by providing the instructions to the patient, registering his/her answers and objectively calculating the final score. This service can help to save time and reach a wider population. From the technical point of view, a challenge is to achieve a highly reliable speech and visual recognition as required for a valid scoring of cognitive performance that can support the assessment from a professional.In this article, we evaluate a system for cognitive assessment that makes use of the IBM AI Cloud services embodied in one of the most popular platforms for social robotics: the SoftBank Pepper. Results of a pilot study with 16 human participants shows that IBM Cloud services for speech and visual recognition can improve the system performance in comparison with standard interfaces. Importantly, the improvement allows achieving a significant correlation with one of the most used paper-and-pencil tests and, therefore, the study demonstrates the validity of the robotic approach for cognitive assessment.