Cognitive training for adults with developmental deficits led by a socially intelligent robot

Košir, Andrej (author), Burnik, Urban (author), Zaletelj, Janez (author), Gril, Gaja (author), Svetelšek, Ajda (author), Tomažič, Sašo (author), Podlesek, Anja (author)

This work presents a socially intelligent robotic system for cognitive training of adults with developmental deficits in a therapist-half-supervised setting. The core idea is to move beyond one-way robot prompting toward a structured, ethically grounded, data-aware intervention framework in which the robot, end user, and therapist form a coordinated triad. The proposed system combines robot behaviour management, session orchestration, user monitoring, and therapist oversight within a unified architecture suitable for iterative real-world deployment. The benefit of this approach lies in the effective integration of artificial intelligence components, human-robot interaction, psychology, and the extensive experience of human experts. Interaction in a real-world environment and the labeling of test datasets occur simultaneously. The contribution is threefold. First, we define a computer-robot-therapist-end-user architecture that explicitly models information flow, therapist control, and adaptive interaction. Second, we provide an experimental procedure for cognitive training sessions that includes training content, session organization, and a user-experience evaluation framework. Third, we introduce a data protection and ethics plan tailored to vulnerable populations, emphasizing informed participation, controlled data access, and responsible system adaptation. Preliminary results indicate that socially guided robot-based training is feasible and acceptable within the proposed framework. A central ongoing challenge is to identify meaningful robot-user interaction events in the relation to their contexts (situations) and to map them to suitable user and robot actions. The longer-term significance of this work lies in connecting clinical and social needs with computational interaction design, making robot-led training more personalized, transparent, and operationally safe for adults with developmental deficits.

• Language: English
• Keywords: assistive technology, cognitive training, social robotics, artificial social intelligence, wizard of oz approach
• Typology: 1.08 - Published Scientific Conference Contribution
• Organization: FE - Faculty of Electrical Engineering; FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 483-491
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-186417
• UDC: 004.896:159.9
• ISSN on article: 2771-0718
• DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1008123
• COBISS.SI-ID: 289573123
• Publication date in RUL: 01.09.2026

Record is a part of a proceedings

• Title: Human Interaction and Emerging Technologies (IHIET 2026)
• COBISS.SI-ID: 289550339

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: AHFE international
• Publisher: AHFE International
• ISSN: 2771-0718
• COBISS.SI-ID: 117224963

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: podporne tehnologije, kognitivni trening, socialna robotika, umetna socialna inteligenca, pristop Čarovnik iz Oza

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P2-0246
• Name: ICT4QoL - Informacijsko komunikacijske tehnologije za kakovostno življenje