RemVerse: Supporting Reminiscence Activities for Older Adults through AI-Assisted Virtual Reality

TL;DR

RemVerse is an AI-powered virtual reality system designed to support reminiscence activities for older adults by providing immersive environments, dynamic visual cues, and interactive dialogues to enhance memory recall and emotional well-being.

Contribution

This paper introduces RemVerse, a novel AI-empowered VR prototype that integrates generative models and AI agents to facilitate reminiscence activities for older adults, addressing limitations of traditional photo-based cues.

Findings

RemVerse effectively triggered and deepened personal memories.

Participants showed increased engagement and autonomy.

The system demonstrated potential for accessible reminiscence support.

Abstract

Reminiscence activities, which involve recalling and sharing past experiences, have proven beneficial for improving cognitive function, mood, and overall well-being. However, urbanization has led to the disappearance of familiar environments, removing visual and audio cues for effective reminiscence. While old photos can serve as visual cues to aid reminiscence, it is challenging for people to reconstruct the reminisced content and environment that are not in the photos. Virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) offer the ability to reconstruct an immersive environment with dynamic content and to converse with people to help them gradually reminisce. We designed RemVerse, an AI-empowered VR prototype aimed to support reminiscence activities. Integrating generative models and AI agent into a VR environment, RemVerse helps older adults reminisce with AI-generated visual cues and interactive dialogues. Our user study with 14 older adults showed that RemVerse effectively supported reminiscence activities by triggering, concretizing, and deepening personal memories, while fostering increased engagement and autonomy among older adults. Based on our findings, we proposed design implications to make reminiscence activities in AI-assisted VR more accessible and engaging for older adults.