Eduardo Carrasco

Platforms for AAL applications

AAL - Ambient Assisted Living. When the topic “AAL” comes up, everybody thinks first of fascinating technology that is unobtrusively integrated in “smart home environments” and supports people in their daily lives. This thinking is surely be driven by the ongoing development of impressive services that was and is still provided by the AAL research community as well as the growing number of companies that bring these technology to market.

Natural Interaction between Avatars and Persons with Alzheimer's Disease

In this paper a natural human computer interaction paradigm is proposed for persons with cognitive impairments such as Alzheimers Disease. The paradigm consists of using a realistic virtual character, rendered on a common television set, to play the role of a virtual personal assistant that shows reminders, notifications and performs short dialogues with the user. In this paradigm, the television remote control is used as a return channel to capture the users responses. To test this concept, a functional prototype was built and then validated by a group of 21 persons with Alzheimers Disease ranging from mild to moderate. For this validation two simple dialogues were developed that consisted of simple Yes/No type questions. The test results showed that with both dialogues all users engaged naturally with the avatar. All of the users understood the information conveyed by the avatar and answered successfully by means of the TV remote control.

Providing universally accessible interactive services through TV sets: implementation and validation with elderly users

One of the challenges that Ambient Intelligence (AmI) faces is the provision of a usable interaction concept to its users, especially for those with a weak technical background. In this paper, we describe a new approach to integrate interactive services provided by an AmI environment with the television set, which is one of the most widely used interaction client in the home environment. The approach supports the integration of different TV set configurations, guaranteeing the possibility to develop universally accessible solutions. An implementation of this approach has been carried out as a multimodal/multi-purpose natural human computer interface for elderly people, by creating adapted graphical user interfaces and navigation menus together with multimodal interaction (simplified TV remote control and voice interaction). In addition, this user interface can also be suited to other user groups. We have tested a prototype that adapts the videoconference and the information service with a group of 83 users. The results from the user tests show that the group found the prototype to be both satisfactory and efficient to use.

Advanced Hybrid Technology for Neurorehabilitation: The HYPER Project

Disabilities that follow cerebrovascular accidents and spinal cord injuries severely impair motor functions and thereby prevent the affected individuals from full and autonomous participation in activities of daily living. Rehabilitation therapy is needed in order to recover from those severe physical traumas. Where rehabilitation is not enough to restore completely human functions then functional compensation is required. In the last years the field of rehabilitation has been inspired by new available technologies. An example is given by rehabilitation robotics where machines are used to assist the patient in the execution of specific and physical task of the therapy. In both rehabilitation and functional compensation scenarios, the usability and cognitive aspects of human-machine interaction have yet to be solved efficiently by robotic-assisted solutions. Hybrid systems combining exoskeletal robots (ERs) with motor neuroprosthesis (MNPs) emerge as promising techniques that blends together technologies that could overcome the limitations of each individual one. Another promising technology which is rapidly becoming a popular application for physical rehabilitation and motor control research is Virtual Reality (VR). In this chapter, we present our research focuses on the development of a new rehabilitation therapy based on an integrated ER-MNP hybrid systems combined with virtual reality and brain neuro-machine interface (BNMI). This solution, based on improved cognitive and physical human-machine interaction, aims to overcome the major limitations regarding the current available robotic-based therapies.

Erratum to: Role of cognitive and functional performance in the interactions between elderly people with cognitive decline and an avatar on TV

The complexity of new information technologies (IT) may limit the access of elderly people to the information society, exacerbating what is known as “the digital divide,” as they appear to be too challenging for elderly citizens regardless of the integrity of their cognitive status. This study is an attempt to clarify how some cognitive functions (such as attention or verbal memory) may determine the interaction of cognitively impaired elderly people with technology. Twenty participants ranging from mild cognitive impairment to moderate Alzheimer’s disease were assessed by means of a neuropsychological and functional battery and were asked to follow simple commands from an avatar appearing on a TV by means of a remote control, such as asking the participant to confirm their presence or to respond Yes/No to a proposal to see a TV program. The number of correct answers and command repetitions required for the user to respond were registered. The results show that participants with a better cognitive and functional state in specific tests show a significantly better performance in the TV task. The derived conclusion is that neuropsychological assessment may be used as a useful complementary tool for assistive technology developers in the adaptation of IT to the elderly with different cognitive and functional profiles. Further studies with larger samples are required to determine to what extent cognitive functions can actually predict older users’ interaction with technology.

Universal Remote Delivery of Rehabilitation: Validation with Seniors' Joint Rehabilitation Therapy

Remote rehabilitation applications still have limited deployment. The path to achieve greater user acceptance and adherence lies in the provision of solutions in their real-life context. Such acceptance is gained through flexibility provided in terms of location, client device, interaction means, and content. This article presents a universal remote rehabilitation delivery approach supporting the introduced flexibility needs. Furthermore, an implementation of the approach in joint rehabilitation for the elderly is described. The approach has been evaluated in a real scenario within Donostia Hospital. The usability evaluation results show the validity of the approach and the acceptance of the developed human −computer interaction paradigm.

Universal Remote Console-based next-generation accessible television

This paper presents a new approach to make current and future television universally accessible. The proposed approach provides a means of universal accessibility both for remotely operating the TV set and for interacting with online services delivered through the TV. This proposal is based on the ISO/IEC 24752 “Universal Remote Console” (URC) standard. This standard defines an abstract user interface layer called the “user interface socket” and allows the development of pluggable (plug-in) user interfaces for any type of user and any control device. The proposed approach lays the foundation for the development of advanced user interfaces that can be interacted within various modalities. Different prototypes have been developed based on this approach and tested with end users. The user tests have shown this approach to be a viable option for the proposed scenarios. Based on the experience gathered with the prototypes, recommendations and implementation options are suggested for commercial adoption.

Inverse Kinematics for Upper Limb Compound Movement Estimation in Exoskeleton-Assisted Rehabilitation.

Robot-Assisted Rehabilitation (RAR) is relevant for treating patients affected by nervous system injuries (e.g., stroke and spinal cord injury). The accurate estimation of the joint angles of the patient limbs in RAR is critical to assess the patient improvement. The economical prevalent method to estimate the patient posture in Exoskeleton-based RAR is to approximate the limb joint angles with the ones of the Exoskeleton. This approximation is rough since their kinematic structures differ. Motion capture systems (MOCAPs) can improve the estimations, at the expenses of a considerable overload of the therapy setup. Alternatively, the Extended Inverse Kinematics Posture Estimation (EIKPE) computational method models the limb and Exoskeleton as differing parallel kinematic chains. EIKPE has been tested with single DOF movements of the wrist and elbow joints. This paper presents the assessment of EIKPE with elbow-shoulder compound movements (i.e., object prehension). Ground-truth for estimation assessment is obtained from an optical MOCAP (not intended for the treatment stage). The assessment shows EIKPE rendering a good numerical approximation of the actual posture during the compound movement execution, especially for the shoulder joint angles. This work opens the horizon for clinical studies with patient groups, Exoskeleton models, and movements types.

ARGUS Autonomous Navigation System for People with Visual Impairments

This work addresses the challenge of designing an effective, reliable and affordable autonomous navigation system for blind and visually impaired people which also covers journey planning and post journey activities (such as recommendations and experiences sharing) . The main contribution focuses on the integration of accurate real-time user positioning data with binaural 3D audio based guiding techniques on mobile devices and a web services delivering platform. The aim is to produce an autonomous navigation system that can be used to guide targeted users along pre-defined tracks and that can be used also before and after the journey to carry out several related tasks such as journey planning, training and sharing of experiences. A preliminary prototype of this concept has been built and tested with 4 end users in both rural and urban environments, obtaining encouraging results.

Universally accessible Task-based user interfaces

This paper introduces a new AAL architecture intended to simplify and enhance the end user interaction with the technology. The proposed concept makes state-of-the-art task model technology available and accessible to all types of users. The concept relies on the integration of both ANSI/CEA-2018 Task Model Description (CE TASK 1.0) and ISO/IEC 24752 Universal Remote Console Framework standards. Additionally, a proof-of-concept implementation has been carried out which assist people in performing blood pressure measurements. Finally, a validation involving 8 elderly persons suffering from Alzheimers disease has been carried out, obtaining encouraging results.