Abstract
Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) are increasingly used in dementia and elderly care. In order to provide effective assistance, SARs need to be personalized to individual patients and account for stimulating their divergent thinking in creative ways. Rule-based fuzzy logic systems provide effective methods for automated decision-making of SARs. However, expanding and modifying the rules of fuzzy logic systems to account for the evolving needs, preferences, and medical conditions of patients can be tedious and costly. In this paper, we introduce EFS4SAR, a novel Evolving Fuzzy logic System for Socially Assistive Robots that supports autonomous evolution of the fuzzy rules that steer the behavior of the SAR. EFS4SAR combines traditional rule-based fuzzy logic systems with evolutionary algorithms, which model the process of evolution in nature and have shown to result in creative behaviors. We evaluate EFS4SAR via computer simulations on both synthetic and real-world data. The results show that the fuzzy rules evolved over time are not only personalized with respect to the personal preferences and therapeutic needs of the patients, but they also meet the following criteria for creativity of SARs: originality and effectiveness of the therapeutic tasks proposed to the patients. Compared to existing evolving fuzzy systems, EFS4SAR achieves similar effectiveness with higher degree of originality.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 105064 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-14 |
Journal | Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence |
Volume | 114 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sept 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research has been supported by the NWO - Open Competition Domain Science XS project “Creative Social Robots with Evolutionary AI for Dementia Therapy” ( OCENW.XS2.055 ), which has been financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)
Funding
This research has been supported by the NWO - Open Competition Domain Science XS project “Creative Social Robots with Evolutionary AI for Dementia Therapy” ( OCENW.XS2.055 ), which has been financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) .
Keywords
- Evolving Fuzzy logic Systems
- Personalized Socially Assistive Robots
- Robot creativity