Eleni Christodoulou

Analysis of Elderly Users’ Preferences and Expectations on Service Robot’s Personality, Appearance and Interaction

Fortunately, improvements in welfare and medical care will allow life expectancy in Europe’s population to increase by the year 2050. However, it is not always the case that living longer implies a healthier, more active and independent life. In this context, technologies and products that will act as assistive companions to elderly, who are living alone at their home, are attracting a growing interest from both a research and commercial perspective. Literature reports contradictory results on the preferences of elderly towards assistive technologies and more specifically, service robots. In this paper, we are called to present an empirical study, conducted in the scope of an EU – Horizon 2020 project, in order to explore people’s perceptions, attitudes and requirements towards the idea of a future service robot for the home.

CogniWin – A Virtual Assistance System for Older Adults at Work

This paper presents an innovative virtual assistant system, which aims to address older adults’ needs in a professional environment by proposing promising and innovative virtual assistance mechanisms. The system, named CogniWin, is expected to alleviate eventual age related memory degradation and gradual decrease of other cognitive capabilities (i.e. speed of processing new information, concentration level) and at the same time assist older adults to increase their learning abilities through personalized learning assistance and well-being guidance. In this paper we describe the overall system concept, the technological approach, the methodology used in the elicitation of user needs, and describe the first pre-trials’ evaluation.

ICT Systems and Services for Ageing Well: Identification and Assessment of an Important Set (Package) of ICT Services for Active Ageing and Independent Living

Currently, the main care model for supporting elderly people living alone at home is based on informal and formal caregivers assistance. Considering the demographic changes of older population, which increases rapidly, this model is expected to pose major challenges both in the economy as well as the society. To address these challenges, there is growing attention for assistive technologies to support seniors stay active and independent, for as long as possible, in their preferred home environments. ICT systems for Ageing Well are among those initiatives. The work presented in this paper is based on the context of the Miraculous-Life project. It focuses on the identification and assessment, in terms of usefulness, technical feasibility and constrains, of a set (package) of services that an ICT system for Ageing Well should support. The results extracted from our study and provided in this paper can be considered by other projects working in the area of Ageing Well and assist the consortium to gain an insight about (i) which ICT services can provide the greater benefit to the elderly and their caregivers’ QoL, and thus reduce time and resources needed to be allocated for identifying, from scratch, the services that will be supported by their system, and (ii) the technical perspective of the ICT services and prioritize their development, as well as, facilitate better allocation of their resources, to minimize any risks that could result in failure to implement these services in the framework of their project.

SocialRobot: An interactive mobile robot for elderly home care

SocialRobot is a collaborative European project, which focuses on providing a practical and interactive robotic solution to improve the quality of life of elderly people. Having this in mind, a state of the art mobile robot platform has been integrated with virtual social care technology to meet the elderly individual needs and requirements, following a human centered approach. In this paper, we make an overview of SocialRobot, addressing mainly the integration of the platform and the architecture developed for the project, as well as the existing robot services, the human-robot interactive scenarios prepared, and results extracted from experimental tests with the mobile robot platform.

Transactive Memory in Task-Driven 3D Virtual World Teams

Collaboration and knowledge sharing in small teams is very usual not only in education but also in industry, in gaming and in our lives. Interdisciplinary teams are formed and their members are expected to collaborate, exploit their capabilities and know-how towards achieving a common goal. In this work we explore whether parameters associated with the development of Transactive Memory System (TMS) can be reflected in a 3D virtual world. People from diverse background and profession brought together in teams to work towards completing an assigned task within a 3D virtual world. The results show strong associations between the parameters of a TMS, collaboration activities and communication scales examined.

Identification of an Individual’s Frustration in the Work Environment Through a Multi-sensor Computer Mouse

Older adults traditionally face major challenges at work when it comes to dealing with new technological tools. A sense of overwhelm and frustration can quickly arise under these circumstances. Continuous negative feelings in the work environment may lead to the increase of the risks for cognitive decline and threaten independence and quality of life. In this work, we focus on the seamless identification of frustration of older adults at work via physiological sensors embedded in an in-house developed computer mouse, denoted as CogniMouse. For the purpose of this research, we have developed a probabilistic classification algorithm that receives real-time signals and physiological measurement streams as input, and accordingly identifies frustration events. Ultimately, such classification can be leveraged to deliver user interventions and personalized solutions to help reduce user frustration.

Verification Methodology of Ethical Compliance for Users, Researchers and Developers of Personal Care Robots

Demographic change is boosting the use of assistive technologies, like Personal Care Robots (PCR), in elderly care. However, the legislation and guidelines for the development of PCR is still fragmented and structured tools and procedures are required. This article presents a proposal for a Verification Methodology for Ethical Compliance in robotic platforms development. Differently from other projects and publications, it does not devote itself to discourse on ethical and moral issues itself but in suggesting a structured method to approach these issues, facilitating an integrated and holistic approach that can ensure more adjusted and fruitful outcomes. This methodology works around a constellation of actors - researchers, developers and end-users – that were involved in all different phases of its development and should also intervene in its enforcement.

A Robotic Cloud Ecosystem for Elderly Care and Ageing Well: The GrowMeUp Approach

Robotic systems in Ageing Well, like GrowMeUp, are among those assistive technologies, providing companionship and offering functionality related to the support of active and independent living, monitoring and maintaining safety, and enhancement of health and psychological well-being of the elderly. The work presented in this paper is based on the context of GrowMeUp project and focuses on presenting the main novelties introduced with the GrowMeUp system, providing a robotic cloud ecosystem, able to support, encourage and engage the older persons to stay socially involved and longer active and independent, in carrying out their daily life at home. Emphasis is given on the important issues of end user’s acceptance, usability and affordability and how technologies like cloud computing and different learning and intelligent dialoguing mechanisms are brought together in one solution to address these issues.