This paper proposes combination of a cognitive agent architecture named Soar (State, operator, and result) and ROS (Robot Operating System), which can be a basic framework for a robot agent to interact and cope with its environment more intelligently and appropriately. The proposed Soar-ROS human-robot interaction (HRI) agent understands a set of human’s commands by voice recognition and chooses to properly react to the command according to the symbol detected by image recognition, implemented on a humanoid robot. The robotic agent is allowed to refuse to follow an inappropriate command like “go” after it has seen the symbol ‘X’ which represents that an abnormal or immoral situation has occurred. This simple but meaningful HRI task is successfully experimented on the proposed Soar-ROS platform with a small humanoid robot, which implies that extending the present hybrid platform to artificial moral agent is possible.

This paper describes the effect of a robot cognitive rehabilitation program on cognitive functions for the elderly with mild cognitive impairment, and compares it with traditional cognitive therapy programs. Three experiment groups including cognition therapy group, robot cognitive rehabilitation group, and hybrid group have been sampled and one comparative group has been organized for this research. 32 old people whose ages are between 61 and 88 with mild cognitive impairment participated in the programs with an admission of W care hospital. According to the program results, the cognitive therapy program alone had shown a positive effect on the attention function, and the robot cognitive rehabilitation program alone had a positive effect on the total intelligence and memory function. However, a simultaneous operation with both programs had shown a positive effect on the three intelligence areas such as total, basic, and management quotients as well as attention and memory functions as subsidiary factors. This paper has verified that the proposed robot cognitive rehabilitation program makes a positive effect on a cognitive function and plays a complementary role with traditional cognitive therapy programs.