A cooking support system for people with higher brain dysfunction

This paper reports a cooking support system for persons with higher brain dysfunction. When a human injured its brain, various brain functions are damaged, such as memory and cognition. This symptom is known as higher brain dysfunction. An effective rehabilitation methods and support systems are essential factors for better Activity of Daily Life (ADL) of the persons with brain dysfunction. However, it is not easy to help the persons, because higher brain dysfunction is invisible and hard to understand. We aim to clarify helpful user interface design for such persons. Two aspects should be considered for the design. The aspects are an analysis of both ability and disability of patients, and customization of interface for a daily life. For the purpose, we focus on cooking, one of the most important ADL. Cooking is complex task because it includes many steps. We designed a multimodal interface of cooking-navigation to show instructions of such a complex task easily. We applied the system for rehabilitation training and a patient could use it nicely.