The aim of this project is to build novel tools that increase the capacity of art therapists to engage cognitively disabled older people in artistic activities. Engagement with the arts is becoming widely accepted as a method for promoting quality of life in older people. However, many older people have difficulty motivating themselves to engage in a creative activity for a reasonable period of time. These difficulties are compounded when the older adult suffers from a cognitive disability, such as dementia (e.g. Alzheimer's disease).
Art therapists are professionals whose job is to work with older adults to engage them in artistic activities that increase quality of life by promoting autonomy and independence. Key goals of art therapy for older adults are promoting the person's autonomy and independence, and fulfilling their need to be meaningfully engaged or occupied, thereby possibly increasing the person's ability to engage in the world around him/her. Find out more about art therapists and their work at British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT)
The project is developing a novel class of tools designed to increase the capacity of art therapists to engage cognitively disabled older people in artistic activities. The tools, known as ePADs, are touch-screen interface creative arts devices that present a user with simple creative arts tasks (e.g. painting). An ePAD uses a camera and computer vision software to track what a person is doing, and a back end that monitors the user's activities and estimates, among other things, their level of engagement using a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). The POMDP uses decision theoretic methods to reason about what actions the device can take to maintain a user's engagement. For example, the device might issue an audible prompt, or might modify the interface (e.g. by adding a new color). An ePAD can use its user models to adapt its strategy over time, or to aid a therapist with assessment.
The ePADs are fully customisable by art therapists, allowing them to add new activities, or change the device's policy. This full cutomizability allows a therapist to come up with new and creative art activities for their clients that adhere to their principles of therapy, and their goals for a particular user. Their customized application can still leverage the powerful back-end artificial intelligence and computer vision algorithms that allow the client device to track and respond to the user appropriately.
These pictures show a screen captures of the therapist interface :
Videos
An example of the art therapy device in action, client application side. The green bar along the bottom shows the system's estimate of the user's level of engagement. The AI back-end tries adding some colors, then prompts the user to re-engage when they become disengaged.
Papers
More details can be found by reading the following papers:
- Scott Blunsden, Brandi Richards, Tom Bartindale, Dan Jackson, Patrick Olivier, Jennifer N. Boger, Alex Mihailidis and Jesse Hoey Design and Prototype of a Device to Engage Cognitively Disabled Older Adults in Visual Artwork. Proceedings of the ACM 2nd International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, Corfu, Greece, 2009
- Jesse Hoey, Brandi Richards, Scott Blunsden, Jane Burns, Tom Bartindale, Dan Jackson, Patrick Olivier, Jennifer N. Boger and Alex Mihailidis ePAD: Engaging Platform for Art Development. IJCAI 2009 Workshop on Intelligent Systems for Assisted Cognition, Pasadena, CA, 2009
Get more information on the University of Toronto website.
American Alzheimer's Association through the Everyday Technology for Alzheimers Care (ETAC) program