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A virtual support partner is to facilitate the everyday life of senior citizens in the near future

23.06.2017
 

Figure 1: In the future, virtual support persons are to make the lives of older people considerably easier. Figure 2: The virtual assistant "Mary" had a positive response from the elderly.

Recently, a renowned international consortium headed by AIT in the center for Health & Bioresources, successfully completed the European research project "Miraculous-Life". The goal was to develop a virtual assistant for the 65+ generation, which supports the daily activities and provides more security. The focus of the research activities was the conception and implementation of an avatar interface in the form of a digital person with whom the target group of the senior citizens can get in contact at any time. Into a screen, or even beyond the project end, integrated into a robot, the avatar will greatly facilitate the lives of older people in the future.

The tricky point of the virtual partner was his understanding of behavior and emotions. Thanks to the Avatar interface, the virtual partner is able to recognize and link facial expressions, pitches, as well as the past activities of the supported person. Based on this, the virtual assistant set the received information from the user's environment into a context and can now use various services (such as reminders of medication intake, stimulation to participate in and registration for activities in the care facility, up to To get help and support). This motivates and stimulates the senior citizens to remain as active and independent as possible. In the long run, users benefit from the system, which allows them to maintain their independence and increase their well-being.

"A dialogue system was developed based on the ability to recognize the emotional status of the user and to set its behavior in the right context. 3D technology is also used to increase the similarity with real people and make the system more accessible to the user. The avatar can also show emotions and a variety of interaction patterns that depend on the emotional situation of the human partner, "says Andreas Stainer-Hochgatterer, Senior Expert Advisor and Project Manager at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology from the branch Wiener Neustadt.

In order to make the interaction with the virtual support partners as natural as possible, an intelligent dialogue management, with language input, was also implemented. In the final testing of the system, more than 40 seniors and carers were involved in Switzerland and the Netherlands. The virtual assistant "Mary" met a positive response among the people of old age, the caregiver organizations and their staff.

Even if significant improvements in voice recognition, dialogue management and the quality of the Internet connection of senior citizens' homes are to be expected in the future, it is already clear that services that increase the autonomy of older people in everyday life, Can be efficiently, motivated and entertained by means of virtual support partners. The findings and developments will, among other things, stimulate further research projects. Zuyderland, project partner and innovative and well-known player in the field of elderly care in the Netherlands, is already very interested in the implementation of a permanent demonstrator in its facilities. In this way, Zuyderland intends to bring the future trends into care and care to a wide range of national and international stakeholders and to gain further experience on the Miraculous-Life project.

The Miraculous-Life project was financed under the European Commission's "7th Framework Program". The partners were:
• AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH (Austria)
• UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA (Switzerland)
• UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS (Cyprus)
• ZUYDERLAND (Netherlands)
• FRAUNHOFER-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FÖRDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG E.V.(Germany)
• NOLDUS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BV (Netherlands)
• CITARD SERVICES LTD (Cyprus)
• ZOOBE MESSAGE ENTERTAINMENT GMBH (Germany)
• MAISON DE RETRAITE DU PETIT-SACONNEX (Switzerland)

Read more: www.miraculous-life.eu