Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Cognitive assisted living ambient system: a survey

The demographic change towards an aging population is creating a significant impact and introducing drastic challenges to our society. We therefore need to find ways to assist older people to stay independently and prevent social isolation of these population. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide various solutions to help older adults to improve their quality of life, stay healthier, and live independently for a time. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is a field to investigate innovative technologies to provide assistance as well as healthcare and rehabilitation to impaired seniors. The paper provides a review of research background and technologies of AAL

Context change and triggers for human intention recognition

In human-robot interaction, understanding human intention is important to smooth interaction between humans and robots. Proactive human-robot interactions are the trend. They rely on recognising human intentions to complete tasks. The reasoning is accomplished based on the current human state, environment and context, and human intention recognition and prediction. Many factors may affect human intention, including clues which are difficult to recognise directly from the action but may be perceived from the change in the environment or context. The changes that affect human intention are the triggers and serve as strong evidence for identifying human intention. Therefore, detecting such changes and identifying such triggers are the promising approach to assist in human intention recognition. This paper discusses the current state of art in human intention recognition in human-computer interaction and illustrates the importance of context change and triggers for human intention recognition in a variety of examples

A software framework for the implementation of dynamic neural field control architectures for human-robot interaction

Useful and efficient human-robot interaction in joint tasks requires the design of a cognitive control architecture that endows robots with crucial cognitive and social capabilities such as intention recognition and complementary action selection. Herein, we present a software framework that eases the design and implementation of Dynamic Neural Field (DNF) cognitive architectures for human-robot joint tasks. We provide a graphical user interface to draw instances of the robot's control architecture. In addition, it allows to simulate, inspect and parametrize them in real-time. The framework eases parameter tuning by allowing changes on-the-fly and by connecting the cognitive architecture with simulated or real robots. Using the case study of an anthropomorphic robot providing assistance to a disabled person during a meal scenario, we illustrate the applicability of the framework.The work was funded by Project NETT: Neural Engineering Transformative Technologies, EU-FP7 ITN (nr.289146), and by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, through the Phd and Posdoc Grants (SFRH/BD/81334/2011 and SFRH/BPD/71874/2010 respectively, financed by POPH-QREN-Type 4.1- Advanced Training, co-funded by the European Social Fund and national funds from MEC), and Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013 together with COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER007043.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evaluation of Bridge Coffee Customer Expexrience

Abstract. Along the years, we can not deny that coffee shop become a fast-growing business in Indonesia especially in urban city such as Jakarta, Bandung, Medan, Surabaya, and other cities. There is a really huge market this sector since drinking coffee is not longer a necessity but lifestyle. Bridge Coffee is on of those coffee players which produce premium roasted Indonesian coffee beans and other beverages for cafes, restaurant, corporation, and especially for end-customer. They are currently planning to open their first coffee shop in Bandung, which they named it Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining. Coffee shop is a very competitive business, and attracting new customers is a consistent challenge. One of the best ways to attract new customers to Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining is to offer something of value to change their "normal" behavior and encourage them to try something new. Therefore, this research has the objective to examine experiential marketing program from Bridge Coffee’s potential customers and give recommendation to Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining on the things the should do. To gather the data, focus group discussions were done three times. The result of this study shows that the customer already recognized some uniqueness of experience in Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining. It highlights the coffee gallery, which show many information about coffee, coffee beans and coffee equipment showcase as the first experience that given to visitor. Another result is that Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining overall service admitted higher than average compared with other cafe or restaurant. Therefore, the recommendation for Bridge Coffee is to provide the customer with a simple customization for their order to create a really pleasent experience. Keywords: Coffee, Coffee shop, Focus group discussion, Experiential marketing, Experienc

Evaluation of Bridge Coffee Customer Expexrience

Abstract. Along the years, we can not deny that coffee shop become a fast-growing business in Indonesia especially in urban city such as Jakarta, Bandung, Medan, Surabaya, and other cities. There is a really huge market this sector since drinking coffee is not longer a necessity but lifestyle. Bridge Coffee is on of those coffee players which produce premium roasted Indonesian coffee beans and other beverages for cafes, restaurant, corporation, and especially for end-customer. They are currently planning to open their first coffee shop in Bandung, which they named it Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining. Coffee shop is a very competitive business, and attracting new customers is a consistent challenge. One of the best ways to attract new customers to Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining is to offer something of value to change their "normal" behavior and encourage them to try something new. Therefore, this research has the objective to examine experiential marketing program from Bridge Coffee’s potential customers and give recommendation to Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining on the things the should do. To gather the data, focus group discussions were done three times. The result of this study shows that the customer already recognized some uniqueness of experience in Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining. It highlights the coffee gallery, which show many information about coffee, coffee beans and coffee equipment showcase as the first experience that given to visitor. Another result is that Bridge Coffee Boutique and Dining overall service admitted higher than average compared with other cafe or restaurant. Therefore, the recommendation for Bridge Coffee is to provide the customer with a simple customization for their order to create a really pleasent experience. Keywords: Coffee, Coffee shop, Focus group discussion, Experiential marketing, Experienc