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

2025-07-17

AI Summary

Urbanization erodes familiar environmental contexts for older adults, diminishing sensory cues critical for autobiographical memory retrieval; conventional photographs inadequately preserve situational integrity. To address this, we propose an AI-augmented virtual reality (VR) reminiscence intervention: a generative-AI framework dynamically reconstructs personalized, immersive memory scenes, while embodied AI agents facilitate progressive, natural-language dialogues to elicit, concretize, and deepen autobiographical recollections. The system integrates multimodal interaction design with emotion-adaptive mechanisms to enhance memory activation, positive affect, and user autonomy. A user study with older adults demonstrates superior feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy compared to existing reminiscence technologies. Our approach establishes a scalable, intelligent VR paradigm for cognitive health support—bridging generative AI, embodied interaction, and gerontechnology to advance evidence-based digital therapeutics.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Agentic search
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Fairness-aware retrieval and ranking
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems

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.

Problem

• Reconstructing missing visual and audio cues for effective reminiscence
• Enhancing reminiscence with AI-generated environments and interactive dialogues
• Improving engagement and autonomy in reminiscence for older adults

Innovation

• AI-assisted VR for reminiscence activities
• Generative models create visual cues
• Interactive dialogues deepen personal memories