The percentage of elderly people in the population is increasing at a phenomenal rate [14]. A significant challenge faced by many elderly is a decline in cognitive functioning, particularly in memory. in this paper, we describe Autominder, an automated agent designed to serve as a" cognitive orthotic", assisting an elderly client in carrying out the required activities of daily life (ADLs), by providing her with timely and appropriate reminders. in generating these reminders, the goal is to balance three objectives:(i) maximizing the client's compliance in performing ADL's;(ii) maximizing the level of caregiver and client satisfaction with the system; and (iii) avoiding making the client overly reliant on the system. Towards these ends, Autominder stores and updates plans representing a client's ADLs, tracks their execution, learns the typical behavior of the client with regard to the execution of these plans, and provides select reminders of the activities to be performed. Autominder is being designed as part of the initiative on Personal Robotic Assistants for the Elderly [12], a project aimed at developing robotic systems to assist elderly persons with memory impairment.