Conversational affective social robots for ageing and dementia support

Socially assistive robots (SAR) hold significant potential to assist older adults and people with dementia in human engagement and clinical contexts by supporting mental health and independence at home. While SAR research has recently experienced prolific growth, long-term trust, clinical translation and patient benefit remain immature. Affective human-robot interactions are unresolved and the deployment of robots with conversational abilities is fundamental for robustness and humanrobot engagement. In this paper, we review the state of the art within the past two decades, design trends, and current applications of conversational affective SAR for ageing and dementia support. A horizon scanning of AI voice technology for healthcare, including ubiquitous smart speakers, is further introduced to address current gaps inhibiting home use. We discuss the role of user-centred approaches in the design of voice systems, including the capacity to handle communication breakdowns for effective use by target populations. We summarise the state of development in interactions using speech and natural language processing, which forms a baseline for longitudinal health monitoring and cognitive assessment. Drawing from this foundation, we identify open challenges and propose future directions to advance conversational affective social robots for: 1) user engagement, 2) deployment in real-world settings, and 3) clinical translation

Transformational government and assistive web base technologies

Transformational government has been on the European agenda for several years. However, progress towards realising the full potential of ICT to transform public services for older adults with age related cognitive impairments has been very limited. Highlighting such limitations this paper demonstrates how assistive web base technologies can be developed to improve the public services for older adults with age related cognitive impairments. However the paper argues that these transformations can be obstructed if there is no strong leadership and political commitment from people at many levels in public sectors and governments

Psychological principles of successful aging technologies: A mini-review

Based on resource-oriented conceptions of successful life-span development, we propose three principles for evaluating assistive technology: (a) net resource release; (b) person specificity, and (c) proximal versus distal frames of evaluation. We discuss how these general principles can aid the design and evaluation of assistive technology in adulthood and old age, and propose two technological strategies, one targeting sensorimotor and the other cognitive functioning. The sensorimotor strategy aims at releasing cognitive resources such as attention and working memory by reducing the cognitive demands of sensory or sensorimotor aspects of performance. The cognitive strategy attempts to provide adaptive and individualized cuing structures orienting the individual in time and space by providing prompts that connect properties of the environment to the individual's action goals. We argue that intelligent assistive technology continuously adjusts the balance between `environmental support' and `self-initiated processing' in person-specific and aging-sensitive ways, leading to enhanced allocation of cognitive resources. Furthermore, intelligent assistive technology may foster the generation of formerly latent cognitive resources by activating developmental reserves (plasticity). We conclude that `lifespan technology', if co-constructed by behavioral scientists, engineers, and aging individuals, offers great promise for improving both the transition from middle adulthood to old age and the degree of autonomy in old age in present and future generations. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Reducing Working Memory Load in Spoken Dialogue Systems

We evaluated two strategies for alleviating working memory load for users of voice interfaces: presenting fewer options per turn and providing confirmations. Forty-eight users booked appointments using nine different dialogue systems, which varied in the number of options presented and the confirmation strategy used. Participants also performed four cognitive tests and rated the usability of each dialogue system on a standardised questionnaire. When systems presented more options per turn and avoided explicit confirmation subdialogues, both older and younger users booked appointments more quickly without compromising task success. Users with lower information processing speed were less likely to remember all relevant aspects of the appointment. Working memory span did not affect appointment recall. Older users were slightly less satisfied with the dialogue systems than younger users. We conclude that the number of options is less important than an accurate assessment of the actual cognitive demands of the task at hand

Multimodal Shared-Control Interaction for Mobile Robots in AAL Environments

This dissertation investigates the design, development and implementation of cognitively adequate, safe and robust, spatially-related, multimodal interaction between human operators and mobile robots in Ambient Assisted Living environments both from the theoretical and practical perspectives. By focusing on different aspects of the concept Interaction, the essential contribution of this dissertation is divided into three main research packages; namely, Formal Interaction, Spatial Interaction and Multimodal Interaction in AAL. As the principle package, in Formal Interaction, research effort is dedicated to developing a formal language based interaction modelling and management solution process and a unified dialogue modelling approach. This package aims to enable a robust, flexible, and context-sensitive, yet formally controllable and tractable interaction. This type of interaction can be used to support the interaction management of any complex interactive systems, including the ones covered in the other two research packages. In the second research package, Spatial Interaction, a general qualitative spatial knowledge based multi-level conceptual model is developed and proposed. The goal is to support a spatially-related interaction in human-robot collaborative navigation. With a model-based computational framework, the proposed conceptual model has been implemented and integrated into a practical interactive system which has been evaluated by empirical studies. It has been particularly tested with respect to a set of high-level and model-based conceptual strategies for resolving the frequent spatially-related communication problems in human-robot interaction. Last but not least, in Multimodal Interaction in AAL, attention is drawn to design, development and implementation of multimodal interaction for elderly persons. In this elderly-friendly scenario, ageing-related characteristics are carefully considered for an effective and efficient interaction. Moreover, a standard model based empirical framework for evaluating multimodal interaction is provided. This framework was especially applied to evaluate a minutely developed and systematically improved elderly-friendly multimodal interactive system through a series of empirical studies with groups of elderly persons

AI-based Technologies for Everyone: How and Why to Adapt Voice Assistants’ Complexity to Older Adults

Technological advancements in the area of artificial intelligence have rapidly improved the performance of speech recognition and natural language processing. These improvements have facilitated the proliferation of voice assistants (VAs), which can understand human speech and provide spoken answers to assist in various tasks. More and more individuals and organizations adopt VAs because they value the naturalness of speech interaction. However, speech interaction is of ephemeral nature and processed in sequential order, which puts cognitive load on the user. Therefore, we investigate the relationship between the complexity of speech interaction and the interaction outcomes enjoyment, satisfaction, and intention to explore. Our results show that this relationship has an inverted U-shape for people with above-median information processing speed (i.e., younger adults) but is negatively linear otherwise. The results contribute to the literature on interface complexity and on the use of IT systems by the elder

Ethical issues in assistive ambient living technologies for ageing well

Assistive Ambient Living (AAL) in ageing refers to any device used to support ageing related psychological and physical changes aimed at improving seniors’ quality of life and reducing caregivers’ burdens. The diffusion of these devices opens the ethical issues related to their use in the human personal space. This is particularly relevant when AAL technologies are devoted to the ageing population that exhibits special bio-psycho-social aspects and needs. In spite of this, relatively little research has focused on ethical issues that emerge from AAL technologies. The present article addresses ethical issues emerging when AAL technologies are implemented for assisting the elderly population and is aimed at raising awareness of these aspects among healthcare providers. The overall conclusion encourages a person-oriented approach when designing healthcare facilities. This process must be fulfilled in compliance with the general principles of ethics and individual nature of the person devoted to. This perspective will develop new research paradigms, paving the way for fulfilling essential ethical principles in the development of future generations of personalized AAL devices to support ageing people living independently at their home