Designing a spoken dialogue interface to an intelligent cognitive assistant for people with dementia

Intelligent cognitive assistants support people who need help performing everyday tasks by detecting when problems occur and providing tailored and context-sensitive assistance. Spoken dialogue interfaces allow users to interact with intelligent cognitive assistants while focusing on the task at hand. In order to establish\ud requirements for voice interfaces to intelligent cognitive assistants, we conducted three focus groups with people with dementia, carers, and older people without a diagnosis of dementia. Analysis of the focus group data showed that voice and interaction style should be chosen based on the preferences of the user, not those of the carer. For people with dementia, the intelligent cognitive assistant should act like a patient,encouraging guide, while for older people without dementia, assistance should be to the point and not patronising. The intelligent cognitive assistant should be able to adapt to cognitive decline

Taxonomy-Driven Prototyping of Home Automation Applications : a Novice-Programmer Visual Language and its Evaluation

International audienceHome automation environments are dedicated to helping users in their everyday life and are being deployed in an increasing number of areas, including home security, energy consumption, and assisted living. The range of situations to be addressed makes the development of home automation applications challenging: it requires to manage hetero- geneous entities with a wide variety of functionalities. Moreover, since this area covers a large spectrum of user needs, it is crucial to ease the development and the evolution of these applications. This paper presents Pantagruel, an expressive and accessible approach to integrating a taxonomical description of a home automation environment into a visual programming language. A taxonomy describes the relevant entities of a given home automation area and serves as a parameter to a sensor-controller-actuator development paradigm. The orchestration of area-specific entities is supported by high-level constructs, customized with respect to taxonomical information. We have implemented a visual environment that integrates a taxonomical approach in the development of orchestration rules. Furthermore, we have developed a compiler for Pantagruel and successfully used it to test applications in various areas related to orchestration development for the domain of home automation. Finally, we have successfully evaluated the usability of Pantagruel through a user study performed with eighteen novice programmers

Development and Evaluation of an Assistive Prompting System for People with Traumatic Brain Injury

Cognitive deficits in executive functioning are among the most frequent sequelae after traumatic brain injury (TBI) at all levels of severity. Due to these functional deficits in cognition, individuals with TBI often experience difficulties in performing instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), especially those IADLs that involve a sequence of goal-directed actions. We obtained updated information on the use of assistive technology for cognition (ATC) through a survey study among twenty-nine participants with TBI. Results highlighted the needs to support the development and evaluation of ATC in assisting multi-step tasks. Cooking tasks were selected as a representative for they are cognitively demanding and have been identified essential for living independently. With the recent advance in sensing and smart home technologies, it’s possible to provide context-aware prompts with minimal user inputs. However, limited information is known regarding what types of context-aware prompts are really needed by people with TBI in completing cooking tasks. We compared the effectiveness and usability of current available prompting methods (e.g. paper-based prompting method and user-controlled method) among ten individuals with TBI in their home kitchens. We categorized the nature of problems faced by end-users with both prompting methods in cooking tasks and proposed relevant context-aware solutions. A test-bed Cueing Kitchen with sensing and prompting elements was developed to address these identified needs and to evaluate the feasibility of context-aware ATC interventions in assisting people with TBI with kitchen activities. Sixteen individuals with TBI participated in the study. Results showed that comparing to the conventional user-controlled method, the automatic method decreased the amount of external assistance required by participants, received higher ratings in perceived ease-of-use, and was helpful for decreasing user stress levels. However, the user-controlled method showed strengths in offering participants more flexibility and control on the timing of prompts. The contributions from this dissertation not only developed a context-aware prompting testbed and evaluated the feasibility of an automatic system, but also advanced the guidelines and potential solutions for future development of assistive prompting technology for people with cognitive impairments in sequential tasks

Archipel : un framework objet pour une approche ubiquitaire de l'assistance cognitive

La cognition humaine est une mécanique fascinante. Mais c'est aussi un ensemble de processus d'une grande fragilité, que le vieillissement pathologique, les troubles acquis ou développementaux viennent endommager, parfois détruire. C'est au jour le jour, dans nos activités de la vie quotidienne, indispensables à notre bien entre physique et moral, que notre cognition est mise à l'épreuve. Pour que celle-ci soit réussie par les personnes atteintes de troubles cognitifs, une aide s'avère souvent nécessaire. Sans cette aide, on ne parle pas d'échec, mais de situation de handicap. Pour les personnes âgées présentant une démence de type Alzheimer, il devient alors difficile d'envisager vieillir au domicile, même si le stade de la maladie n'est pas trop avancé. Or ces populations sont en constante augmentation et l'accueil institutionnel ne suit pas. Pour les jeunes adultes touchés par une déficience intellectuelle, c'est l'accession à une vie autonome qui est remise en cause. Peut-on alors assurer leur épanouissement ? Que le problème soit envisagé sur un plan humain ou économique, nos sociétés doivent trouver des solutions pour favoriser l'autonomie fonctionnelle des personnes souffrant de troubles cognitifs. Parmi les alternatives possibles, la recherche technologique offre déjà des éléments de réponse pertinents. Ce projet de doctorat approfondit cette voie en abordant l'assistance cognitive à la réalisation d'activités domiciliaires complexes. Archipel est le nom du prototype développé au cours de cette recherche. Ce framework offre un cadre pour la mise en place d'applications à forte sensibilité au contexte d'assistance cognitive. Les problèmes abordés concernent la représentation des connaissances, avec une approche par objets alliant la théorie des architectures à métaclasses complètes à la pratique en XML et Java, et offrant grâce à son protocole à métaobjets simple l'opportunité d'une représentation adaptable et adaptée. Le monitorage ou suivi de la réalisation d'activités est le second problème abordé. II vise à s'assurer que les actions réalisées par la personne suivent une démarche appropriée. Une mise en oeuvre basée sur le système conseiller EpiTalk est présentée. La prise en compte des erreurs réalisées et la génération d'actes d'assistance adaptés est la troisième facette de ce framework. Enfin, les interactions homme-machine, permettant perception des actions et diffusion de l'assistance dans un esprit ubiquitaire constituent le dernier point de ce projet. Le bien-fondé de cette approche est justifié par le déploiement d'Archipels dans l'appartement laboratoire DOMUS et la réalisation d'une expérimentation du système par douze adultes présentant une déficience intellectuelle